Research on manipulation of tiny mechanical and biological objects is becoming important and popular because of the expected wide range of applications and also for the many theoretical and technological problems that it poses. Robotics researchcould con tribute in various ways to improve current techniques and instrumentation for micromanipulation. In this paper we discuss first some general aspects of micromanipulation and possible different approaches. Then, we present new results in themicromanipulation of mechanical and biological objects. The apparatus we use is a purposely developed workstation comprising macro- and micro-manipulators. The most innovative component of the workstation is a micro-gripper fabricated using LIGAtechnology and actuated by piezoelectric actuators. In this paper we describe the design, fabrication and performance of a few prototypes of LIGA micro-grippers. Results are presented which demonstrate the ability of the system to manipulate effectivelyboth micro-mechanical and biological micro-objects.
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