A Microrobotic Approach for the Intuitive Assembly of Industrial Electrooptical Sensors Based on Closed-Loop Light Feeling

This article deals with an original haptic teleoperation and human-robot interaction (HRI) for microrobotic tasks involving optics and more generally light information. It aims to demonstrate the proof of concept of using light information in haptic teleoperation for component alignment with submicrometer accuracy. The case study focuses on the alignment of a laser optical fiber on the active surface of a photodiode using a microrobotic system and a pantograph. Since an alignment error of 1 mu m leads to a loss of more than 35% in signal transmission, it is shown that the transparency of the pantograph is a key element for the success of the operation. A user evaluation is performed to quantify the interest and acceptability of the different HRI scenarios proposed in this work. The result shows the effectiveness of the methods when the interface transparency is managed with a disturbance observer. The HRI allows the human to experience small variations of light intensity, typically a few mu W, over a large range, typically several hundred mu W. This capability enables the participant to intuitively align the optical fiber in the region of interest with a sub-mu m accuracy and a success rate of about 94.7%.