Drift compensation and faulty display correction in robotic nano manipulation

Abstract

Random drift and faulty visual display are the main problems in Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) based robotic nanomanipulation. As far as we know, there are no effective methods available to solve these problems. In this paper, an On-line Sensing and Display (OSD) method is proposed to solve these problems. The OSD method mainly includes two subprocesses: Local-Scan-Before- Manipulation (LSBM) and Local-Scan-After-Manipulation (LSAM). During manipulation, LSBM and LSAM are on-line performed for random drift compensation and faulty visual display correction respectively. Through this way, the bad influence aroused from random drift and faulty visual display can be eliminated in real time. The visual feedback keeps consistent with the true environment changes during the process of manipulation, which makes several operations being finished without an image scan in between. Experiments show the increased effectiveness and efficiency of AFM based nanomanipulation. Copyright © 2010 American Scientific Publishers.