Development of the orthogonal microrobot for accurate microscopic operations

In this paper, we describe the development of an orthogonal microrobot for accurate microscopic operations. To conduct the microscopic operation, a simple locomotion mechanism composed of one piezoelectric actuator and two U-shaped electromagnets is proposed. The orthogonal microrobot can move precisely in one-axis with the manner of an inchworm. We use permanent magnets so that this robot can fix itself on a steel surface when no voltage is applied. To provide XY orthogonal positioning, we connect one microrobot to another microrobot orthogonally. To realize cell processing, we arrange the three two-axial orthogonal microrobots on an inverted microscope. We load a simple micropump on right and left robots to hold biological samples such as an egg cell and to inject reagent solutions into biological samples. Finally, we arrange another microrobot between the other two microrobots to position samples. The whole cell processing device is very small, so we can easily set up the whole device to microprocessing instruments. In experiments, orthogonal microrobots succeeded in holding an egg cell with a diameter of 100 μm and sticking the pipette with a diameter of 5 μm into the egg cell under a specific GUI control system with a visual feedback function.