A novel flexure-based dual-arm robotic system for high-throughput biomanipulations on micro-fluidic chip

In recent years, robotic bio-manipulation emerges as a hot research topic in the micro/nano technology. In these applications, biological cell microinjection is a focus since it is a critical process for the further biological research such as genetic engineering and pharmacology research. This study aims to develop a novel robotic biomanipulation system combining with the micro-fluidic chip technology to improve the cell manipulation stability and throughput. Two novel flexure-based large-workspace micromanipulators with modified differential lever displacement amplifier (MDLDA) are presented in this paper. After a series of optimal designs and mechanism modeling, the mechanism performances are evaluated by the FEA method. Finally, the proposed micromanipulators are fabricated and visual-servo controlled to perform the practical zebrafish embryos injection task. In this work, two piezoelectric (PZT) actuators P-216.80 (open-loop travel is 120 μm) and one PZT actuator P-840.20 (open-loop travel is 30 μm) are utilized in the compliant mechanisms, the experiment results indicate that the displacement amplification ratios can reach up to 30.6 and 17.6, thus the maximum output displacements can achieve around 3.1273 mm and 0.528 mm, the rotation angle of the left micromanipulator can reach to around 26.5°. Both theoretical derivation and experimental implementation results well verify the advanced performance of the developed system.