Development and Force/Position Control of a New Hybrid Thermo-Piezoelectric MicroGripper Dedicated to Micromanipulation Tasks

A new microgripper dedicated to micromanipulation and microassembly tasks is presented in this paper. Based on a new actuator, called thermo-piezoelectric actuator, the microgripper presents both a high range and a high positioning resolution. The principle of the microgripper is based on the combination of the thermal actuation (for the coarse positioning) and the piezoelectric actuation (for the fine positioning). In order to improve the...