Grasping microscopic objects by an optical trapping system controlled by five finger tips

摘要

There are increased needs for manipulating microscopic objects. One of enabling technologies is an instrument called optical tweezers (OT) that uses a focused laser beam to trap and move microscopic objects. OT has been shown effective for directly manipulating spherical, cylindrical or axis-symmetrical shapes. For other forms of shapes that do not show any symmetry, there have been works on using micrometer sized balls as a handle to indirectly manipulate the objects. Direct manipulation is difficult because complex trapping potential needs to be calculated to stably trap non-symmetrical shapes. User interfaces for these "indirect" systems use a computer mouse to design a layout of balls for surrounding (holding) an object and a trajectory that describes how these balls as a whole moves. The contained object pushed by these surrounding balls then moves accordingly. In this study, we introduce an intuitive user interface system for manipulating these balls. Using virtual reality gloves, each finger tip position of an operator is used to position control these balls. This user interface system enables the operator to intuitively grasp, move and release irregular formed shapes.