Although robotic micromanipulation using microtweezers has been widely explored, the current manipulation throughput hardly exceeds one operation per second. Increasing the manipulation throughput is thus a key factor for the emergence of robotized microassembly industries. This article presents MiGriBot (Millimeter Gripper Robot), a miniaturized parallel robot with a configurable platform and soft joints, designed to perform pick-and-place operations at the microscale. MiGriBot combines in a single robot the benefits of a parallel kinematic architecture with a configurable platform and the use of soft joints at the millimeter scale. The configurable platform of the robot provides an internal degree of freedom that can be used to actuate microtweezers using piezoelectric bending actuators located at the base of the robot, which notably reduces the robot’s inertia. The soft joints make it possible to miniaturize the mechanism and to avoid friction. These benefits enable MiGriBot to reach a throughput of 10 pick-and-place cycles per second of micrometer-sized objects, with a precision of 1 micrometer.

This article presents a new robot concept dedicated to fast and energy-efficient waste sorting applications. This parallel robot can provide at the same time the three translations in space (3-DoF) and the opening/closing of a built-in gripper (1 additional DoF). The movement of the clamp is enabled thanks to a configurable platform at the end of the parallel structure. This platform is composed of a two-gear train gripper which is directly controlled by the 4 actuators attached to the base of the manipulator. The inverse kinematic as well as the differential models have been developed. A first prototype has been realized to validate this new parallel architecture for pick-and-toss tasks.