Design and optimization of a macro-micro manipulator featuring a 3-UPS compliant parallel mechanism

Abstract

Micromanipulation in microtechnology is highly needed for microfabrication and biomedical applications. Specifically, high manipulation resolution combined with accurate macromotions plays a more crucial role especially in the production of semi-conductors, assembly of integrated circuits as well as the accurate manipulation of cells and chromosomes. As a result, it is desired to design such a manipulator to be capable of achieving macro-micro manipulation with high accuracy and high reliability. This thesis proposes a novel macro-micro manipulator system composed of two different parallel mechanisms which are responsible for the macro motion and the micro manipulation respectively. The macromanipulator is a 3-RRR planar parallel mechanism which has the mobility of 3 DOFs, namely two translational DOFs along x- and y-axis and one rotational DOF around the z-axis while the micromanipulator is a 3-UPS compliant parallel mechanism with an orthogonal structure of 3 translational DOFs. The work in the thesis covers structural design of the macro-micro manipulator, kinematic modeling and inverse kinematic analysis, formulation of Jacobian matrix; micromanipulator-focused stiffness evaluation, workspace analysis and structural optimization of stiffness and workspace properties.