Scientific coordinator: Redwan Dahmouche - redwan.dahmouche@femto-st.fr
Guillaume Laurent, Cédric Clevy, Michaël Gauthier
PhD Students: Maxence Leveziel
Former PhD students: Wissem Haouas
Objectives
The goal of this work is to develop a new generation of dexterous, compact and precise micro-robots as well as methods to design, model and control them to perform fine manipulation at small scales. These robots represent the main bricks of the future automated assembly system of nanodevices supporting the current nanotechnology revolution as well as minimally invasive surgery. To reach this goal, the three concepts presented bellow are currently under development.
Parallel robots with configurable platforms
To be able to achieve dexterous micro/nano-manipulation, grasping is ensured by the robot itself without requiring any additional gripper. New robotic architectures integrating the 6 DoF motion and grasping are developed. Since grasping is part of the robotic structure, all the 7 DoF (3 translations + 3 rotations + grasping) are controlled from actuators fixed on the robot base and no wire is required to actuate the gripper.
7 DoF Parallel robot with configurable platform
Hybrid soft-rigid parallel structures
To have a large workspace in translation and rotation, soft materials (PDMS for instance) that play the role of soft joints are combined to silicon links to obtain the desired kinematics. High displacement and rotation ranges can be obtained (higher than 50° in all directions).
Hybrid Rigid-Soft structures allowing high bending angles
New micro-fabrication processes
For the fabrication of microstructures with hybrid materials (soft and rigid), new micro-fabrication processes are developed. These processes allow integrating almost any elastomer (PDMS, rubber, silicone, etc.) into a silicon structure and simplify the existing micro-fabrication processes.
New fabrication process for integrating elastomers into silicon structures
Selected publications
- R. Dahmouche, K. Wen, and C. Gosselin, “Transferability in an 8-DoF Parallel Robot with a Configurable Platform,” in 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2020, pp. 6544–6549.
- B. Mauzeet, R. Dahmouche, G.J. Laurent, A.N. Andre, Antoine N, P. Rougeot, P. Sandoz, C. Clevy, “Nanometer Precision with a Planar Parallel Continuum Robot,”IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett., vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 3806–3813, 2020.
- W. Haouas, G. J. Laurent, S. Thibaud, and R. Dahmouche, “Kinematics, Design and Experimental Validation of a Novel Parallel Robot for Two-Fingered Dexterous Manipulation,” in 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2019, pp. 6763–6768.
- Wissem Haouas, Redwan Dahmouche, Nadine Le Fort-Piat, et Guillaume J Laurent. A new seven degrees-of-freedom parallel robot with a foldable platform. Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, 10(4) :045001, 2018
- Wissem Haouas, Redwan Dahmouche, Joël Agnus, Nadine Le Fort-Piat, et Guillaume J Laurent. New integrated silicon-PDMS process for compliant micro-mechanisms. Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, 27(12) :127001, 2017
- Wissem Haouas, Redwan Dahmouche, Nadine Le Fort-Piat, et Guillaume J Laurent. 4-DoF spherical parallel wrist with embedded grasping capability for minimally invasive surgery. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pages 2363–2368. IEEE., 2016
- Wissem Haouas, Redwan Dahmouche, et Guillaume J Laurent. Analysis of an integrated 4-DoF parallel wrist for dexterous gripping. IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering. 2018
Patents
1. Redwan Dahmouche et Wissem Haouas. Robotic structure with six degrees of freedom allowing gripping, WO 2018/065702 A1, 2018.
2. Guillaume J Laurent, Redwan Dahmouche, Wissem Haouas, et Nadine Le Fort-Piat. Parallel robotic wrist with four degrees of freedom, WO 2018/065734 A1, 2018.