Student Name: Muhammad Ahsan Naeem

Research Topic: Microconveyor: Analysis of Microscale Translocation on Flexible Surface

Supervisor: Dr. Mohsin Rizwan

Current Progress: In-progress

Description

In this age of technological advancement, there is much emphasis on the small-scale components owing to their flexibility in operation, increased capability, and ease of handling. The need for miniaturization led to the beginning of the MEMS era. MEMS have wide applications in the field of automotive, biomedical, military, aerodynamics, and so forth. These systems are operated with more accuracy and produce precise results in addition to fulfilling the requirement of existing hardware. With the reduced size, there is a significant need to precisely manipulate small-scale objects to their desired locations. MEMS design, manufacturing, assembly and handling need the use of new technologies and consideration of new parameters which are not considered at the macro scale. Different with-gripper and gripper-less techniques related to handling and positioning of micro scale particles are used for the manipulation of microparts. This research proposes a technique, based on controlled surface deformation, to translocate the micro-scale objects.

Micropart manipulation and handling techniques are different from macro-scale handling. For example, weight is a dominant force at macro scale whereas it is negligible at the micro scale and instead the surface forces are dominant. These dominant surface forces can affect the micropart pick and place since the part may get stuck to the gripper. These surface forces include Van der Waals, Casimir forces, electrostatic forces and capillary forces, and these depend upon material properties, size and geometry of the micropart.

A new approach for the translocation of micropart is presented in this research through mathematical modeling while accommodating microscale surface and body forces. There are various techniques for microscale assembly including pick and place, parallel manipulation on work cells and manipulation using the microcontroller-operated 3D structures, etc. Many work cells have been proposed to manipulate micropart using pneumatic, magnetic or electromechanical manipulation mechanisms. These existing techniques for micropart manipulation incorporate discrete actuators. Discrete actuation puts a threshold on the size of the part to be handled. In discrete actuation, as the size of the part becomes smaller the part will get stuck between actuators and cannot be handled. This dead zone constraint requires the size of the part to be larger than the distance between the actuators to ensure the part is in contact with more than one actuator at all times as shown schematically for a pneumatic microconveyor in Figure 1 otherwise, the part may fall in between the gap. These existing techniques also do not discuss the role of surface forces which includes Van der Waals, Casimir forces, electrostatic forces and capillary forces, on system dynamics. In this research, a new technique of micropart handling is explored based on the concept of the active surface which is controllably deformed inducing the inertia and hence the motion on the micropart placed above it.

Publications

  • Naeem, M. A., Sarwar, A., Humayun, A., & Waseem, M. (2021). The Development of Robot Control via Virtual Reality for Safe Human-Robot Interaction. Pakistan Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
  • Naeem, M. A., Rizwan, M., & Shiakolas, P. S. (2021). Micropart Motion on a Surface Due to Controlled Surface Excitation. IEEE Access, 9, 98916-98927.
  • Baig, M. M. F. A., Khan, S., Naeem, M. A., Khan, G. J., & Ansari, M. T. (2018). Vildagliptin loaded triangular DNA nanospheres coated with eudragit for oral delivery and better glycemic control in type 2 diabetes mellitus. Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, 97, 1250-1258.
  • Khan, G. J., Rizwan, M., Abbas, M., Naveed, M., Boyang, Y., Naeem, M. A., … & Sun, L. (2018). Pharmacological effects and potential therapeutic targets of DT-13. Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, 97, 255-263.
  • Iqbal, S., Naeem, M. A., & Nayyar, A. (2016, November). Status of MOOCs in Pakistan: Optimism and concerns. In 2016 European Modelling Symposium (EMS) (pp. 237-241). IEEE.
  • Naeem, M. A., & Hasan, K. M. (2013, October). Direct torque control (DTC) of three phase induction motor using model based predictive control (MPC) scheme deploying branch and bound algorithm. In 2013 International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications (ICRERA) (pp. 990-995). IEEE.