3D calibration for micro-manipulation with precise position measurement

In the biotechnology field, it is very difficult to manipulate microscopic material through human handling. There is a great need for a new experimental system that is easy to operate. In this paper, we show a 3D calibration technique for reducing positional errors of a glass pipette tip, attached to a micro-manipulator. We then propose a method of observing the manipulator tip with sub-micron order accuracy using a newly developed lighting method with an optical fiber. We also take into account the influence of the positional error of the z-axis introduced by the optical system. In the last part of this paper, we show effectiveness of these methods through experiments.