Control System of an Automated Nanohandling Robot Cell

Abstract

Current research work on the development of a nanohandling cell in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) is presented. An experimental setup is shown, in which two microrobots operate in the vacuum chamber of an SEM. In order to enable automatic nanohandling, a modular control system architecture is proposed. Different microrobots can be integrated in a flexible manner using a common control interface. The system easily scales up for more complex robot and sensor setups. Parallel execution of open and closed-loop control tasks can be performed. The functionality of the robot cell is exemplified by handling and mechanical characterization of carbon nanotubes (CNT).