The development of a microgripper with a perturbation-based configuration design method

Abstract

Microgrippers have been developed for handling and manipulating micro-sized objects in MEMS applications and biotechnology. Many kinds of materials and structures of microgrippers have been developed for fields of various applications. However, design methods have not been studied widely. This paper presents a perturbation-based microgripper design method with two constraints which are a residual error and an energy balance and can be used in system parameter identification and model correlation of structural systems. Many mechanical systems have undesirable static and dynamic characteristics. The practical design involves moderate changes in stiffness related to geometry dimensions or add-ons. The designed microgripper is fabricated by a polymeric material (SU-8). PZT is applied for driving the microgripper. The performance test of the microgripper is taken under a microscope. The experiment shows that the designed microgripper with the proposed method has successfully grasped micro size objects.