In-Plane Manipulation of Soft Micro-Fiber with Ultrasonic Transducer Array and Microscope

Noncontact manipulation of soft micro-fibers has great potential in advanced manufacturing, materials science, and biomedical engineering. However, current noncontact manipulation techniques primarily focus on objects with regular shapes, e.g., solid particles, cells, or droplets, with fewer solutions available for manipulating flexible and elongated structures. In this paper, an automated ultrasonic manipulation system is introduced for in-plane soft micro-fiber manipulation, which mainly consists of an ultrasonic transducer array and a microscope. A real-time trap generation algorithm is designed to manipulate the micro-fibers by the visual feedback from microscope. An adequate theoretical analysis is also provided for explanation of the deformation behavior of micro-fiber under external forces. The system is capable of precise in-plane positioning and motion trajectory planning to micro-fiber end, and in-plane morphological reshaping to the micro-fiber. Experiments validated the effectiveness of the proposed system for the in-plane manipulation of soft micro-fibers. Finally, the system was showcased by the practical application of material property characterization.