Paper Info
Title
Locating End-Effector Tips in Robotic Micromanipulation
Abstract
In robotic micromanipulation, end-effector tips must be first located under microscopy imaging before manipulation is performed. The tip of micromanipulation tools is typically a few micrometers in size and highly delicate. In all existing micromanipulation systems, the process of locating the end-effector tip is conducted by a skilled operator, and the automation of this task has not been attempted. This paper presents a technique to automatically locate end-effector tips. The technique consists of programmed sweeping patterns, motion history image end-effector detection, active contour to estimate end-effector positions, autofocusing and quad-tree search to locate an end-effector tip, and, finally, visual servoing to position the tip to the center of the field of view. Two types of micromanipulation tools (micropipette that represents single-ended tools and microgripper that represents multiended tools) were used in experiments for testing. Quantitative results are reported in the speed and success rate of the autolocating technique, based on over 500 trials. Furthermore, the effect of factors such as imaging mode and image processing parameter selections was also quantitatively discussed. Guidelines are provided for the implementation of the technique in order to achieve high efficiency and success rates.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1109/TRO.2013.2280060
IEEE Transactions on Robotics
Keywords
Field
DocType
Active contours,Grippers,Microscopy,Radio frequency,Kalman filters
Active contour model,Field of view,Computer vision,Object detection,Image processing,Control engineering,Automation,Robot end effector,Visual servoing,Artificial intelligence,Engineering
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
30
1
1552-3098
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
14
1.22
9
Authors
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jun Liu1274.65
Zheng Gong2253.48
Kathryn Tang3161.77
Zhe Lu4648.86
Changhai Ru53810.24
Jun Luo69825.37
Shaorong Xie711238.53
Yu Sun841869.89