Development of vision system for two-fingered micro manipulation

A dexterous micro manipulation system is developed for application in assembling micro machines, manipulating cells, and micro surgery. We have proposed a concept of a two-fingered micro hand, and designed and built a prototype. In the micro manipulation, the system to observe microscopic objects is important as well as a system for actually manipulating a microscopic object. An optical microscope or SEM (scanning electron microscope) is typically used to observe micro motion of fingers in the micro hand. In high scale magnification, its focusing range is limited and the finger tip may often go out of the sight. We propose and develop a vision system using auto focus by processing CCD image data in order to obtain a fine image of the finger tip and microscopic object in a micro task.