Although robotic micromanipulation using microtweezers has been widely explored, the current manipulation throughput hardly exceeds one operation per second. Increasing the manipulation throughput is thus a key factor for the emergence of robotized microassembly industries. This article presents MiGriBot (Millimeter Gripper Robot), a miniaturized parallel robot with a configurable platform and soft joints, designed to perform pick-and-place operations at the microscale. MiGriBot combines in a single robot the benefits of a parallel kinematic architecture with a configurable platform and the use of soft joints at the millimeter scale. The configurable platform of the robot provides an internal degree of freedom that can be used to actuate microtweezers using piezoelectric bending actuators located at the base of the robot, which notably reduces the robot’s inertia. The soft joints make it possible to miniaturize the mechanism and to avoid friction. These benefits enable MiGriBot to reach a throughput of 10 pick-and-place cycles per second of micrometer-sized objects, with a precision of 1 micrometer.

This article presents a new robot concept dedicated to fast and energy-efficient waste sorting applications. This parallel robot can provide at the same time the three translations in space (3-DoF) and the opening/closing of a built-in gripper (1 additional DoF). The movement of the clamp is enabled thanks to a configurable platform at the end of the parallel structure. This platform is composed of a two-gear train gripper which is directly controlled by the 4 actuators attached to the base of the manipulator. The inverse kinematic as well as the differential models have been developed. A first prototype has been realized to validate this new parallel architecture for pick-and-toss tasks.

This paper presents a new parallel robot with an integrated gripper. The grasping capability of the robot is obtained by a foldable platform that can be fully controlled by actuators located on the base of the seven degrees-of-freedom (DoF) parallel structure. This mechanism combines three key specificities in robotics which are compactness, rigidity, and high blocking forces. The paper presents the new structure, its kinematic modeling, and an analysis of its workspace and grasping force capabilities. In addition, a prototype is presented and tested in manipulation and insertion operations, which validates the proposed concept.

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomers are used for many applications, such as microfluidics and micro-engineering. This paper presents a new process of integrating soft elastomers into a silicon structure without any assembly steps. The novelty of this process is the use of only one deep reactive ion etch (DRIE) instead of two or more as developed in previous works. Thus, this fabrication process allows the use of elastomers that are usually not compatible with some fabrication processes. Compliant flexures with different interference shapes have been designed, simulated, fabricated, and characterized for generic use and notably for micro-robot joints and compliant micro-systems. The experimental results show that the 400 μ m × 400 μ m cross-sectional area samples can be bended more than 60 ∘ without delamination.

The manipulation of microscale components with complex shape like semiconductors, 3D printed microparts, and optical lenses, remains challenging due to strong surface forces and limitations of existing methods. A 3D‐printed soft pneumatic microgripper capable of rectilinear deformation is presented in this paper. It addresses these challenges through a concave design with two operational modes (snap and continuous) and an integrated adhesion‐reducing mask. Fabricated with IP‐PDMS two‐photon polymerisation 3D printing, the microgripper achieves a 40 minimum operation diameter and demonstrates a substrate‐free release force as low as 11.1 nN with an adhesion switching ratio of 373 in the normal direction. Combined with rigid alignment, the device enables universal pick‐and‐place over a range of micro‐objects and mid‐air transition of ultralight components (≈1.14 ) in confined spaces. With over 30000 actuation cycles without performance degradation, this scalable design can execute complex manipulation tasks through a multi‐gripper system as demonstrated.