Institut des Systèmes Intelligents
et de Robotique

Coordinator of a translational research project TACTOM (Tactile Optical Micromanipulation) 
with the company SATT LUTECH (accelerating technology transfer)
and the microrobotique team of Stephane Regnier,
in charge of the development of a new platform of haptic optical tweezers.

Present research

TACTile Optical Micromanipulation - TACTOM

The different patents of our team have allow us to build a maturation project of our technologies in sight of an industrial transfert. The matring technologies are a real-time system of laser micromanipulation (optical tweezers) which have high responsiveness and multiples traps. Our measurement system is based on high-speed asynchrone sensors and the user interface feed back the force information with our specifically designed high quality haptic interfaces. The aim of this project is to propose a demonstration of this interactif and immersif system with biological objects as cells or molecules.

Responsable : Stéphane Régnier

Funding : SATT Lutech - maturation project

Collaboration with the ISIR - haptic team from Vincent Hayward and with the team of Ryad Benosman.

Past research

Study with optical tweezers of swimming microrobots propelled by bacteria

Bio-functionalized robots are complex system with statistical behavior. Their characterization and their control is a new challenge in bio-technologies. Optical tweezers airborne and confine one robot and allow a long time tracking in order to extract the propulsion parameters, the distribution of the bacteria, the lifetime of the robot and the behavior of the flagella with the hydrodynamic interaction.

Funding : NSF CPS-Medium Project (CNS-1135850)

Swimming robot Webpage

Static and dynamic mechanical characterisation of nanometricmembranes

The NanoRobust project aims to solve research predicament for nanomanipulation and characterisation of membranes under electronic microscope conditions. The developed robotised platform must face specifications of real concret application like nano-resonators or graphen films characterisation.

Multi-fingers grasping strategy with haptic and tactile feedback for optical tweezers

Optical tweezers have a great potential for micro-objects handling in parallel traps. Classical installations need to be modified to allow fully dexterous use of micromanipulation platform and reproduce hand grasping strategies in the microworld. Improvements of the user immersion would help standardisation of analysis methods for microsystems, microcristals, cells and proteins.

Thesis subject

Tactile perceptions in optical tweezers based micromanipulation

Today, microtechnologies are common practice in the industry. They are generally mass-produced by photolithography with several inherent difficulties. As a result, it is difficult to diagnosis defects in single parts as individual manipulation is complex and not cost-effective. In order to overcome these shortcomings, microrobotics proposes different techniques, either fully automated or teleoperated.
Given the complexity of the manipulation task and the required flexibility, it is necessary to involve a human operator in the process. The use of force feedback is a recommended approach to enhance the operator’s dexterity. In the case of microscale manipulation, big scaling ratios and specific dynamics are critical for a bilateral coupling schemes. In order to guarantee the stability of such a coupling, advances controllers are used with the secondary effect to reduce the quality of the force information, hence the sensation, fed back to the user.
The approach proposed here aims to design a micromanipulation system specifically tailored to overcome these shortcomings, improving the human perception of the manipulation task while still guaranteeing the stability, instead of adapting an existing system to a force feedback scheme. in this prospect, several technical paths and optmizations are investigated :
        • a dedicated contact-less manipulation technique based on optical tweezers,
        • maximization of actuation and sensor workspaces,
        • enhancement of the bandwidth and dynamic performances,
        • development of a robust novel sensor based on event-based vision.
In the frame of this multidisciplinary study, three experimental setups are constructed in collaboration with specialists in micromanipulation, computer vision and haptic/tactile perceptions.

Funding : CNRS - CEA Grant for Doctor-Engineer
    ISIR - INTERACTION Team - Stéphane Régnier, PhD adviser
   CEA - Sensory Interface Laboratory - Mehdi Boukallel, project manager , Arvid Bergander, project manager (http://www-list.cea.fr)