3D Noncontact Micro-Particle Manipulation With Acoustic Robot End-Effector Under Microscope

As an essential component of noncontact manipulation, acoustic manipulation has achieved great success in multidisciplinary research and applications. Although acoustic tweezers have made advancements in manipulating particles in air, handling individual particles with high precision in water remains challenging and inadequately addressed due to the difficulty in precisely characterizing and calibrating acoustic robot end-effectors from a robotic perspective. In this letter, we present a vision-based automated noncontact particle manipulation approach using an acoustic robot end-effector, which achieves precise and reliable particle manipulation in 3D space. Specifically, visual feedback is incorporated for micro-particle localization, and a dynamic acoustic field modulation method is proposed for controlling the end-effector. The invisible robot end-effector is localized and characterized through hydrophone scanning. The proposed vision solution is capable of automated trapping and precise translation of micro-particles suspended in a water-based environment and is applicable to particles with both negative and positive impedance contrast against the medium. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach towards automated noncontact particle manipulation with an acoustic robot end-effector.