Micro-Nano Two-Fingered Hybrid Manipulator Hand

Abstract

The description of the architecture for a new compact but yet economical micro-nano two-fingered hybrid manipulator hand is presented. This hand consists of two 3-DOF parallel mechanisms, upper and lower, connected in series. Each of them consists of a parallel kinematics chain with a glass pipette as an end effector. It is driven by three piezo-electric actuators in the three legs of the parallel kinematics chain. Each leg has the structure of prismatic-revolute-spherical (PRS) joint structure. For long lengths of glass pipette end effector, this hand can be used as micro-manipulator and it can be used as nano-manipulator for short lengths. Based on the inverse kinematics solution, a simulation program is built to optimally choose the design parameters. A proposed computer aided design (CAD) model based on optimal parameters is built and realized. Also the system hardware setup of the micro-nano hand, its calibrated practical Jacobian inverse matrices, its calibrated workspace volume, and its error analysis are presented.