Design and Calibration of Ultra-high-precision Industrial Robots

In this paper we present the key phases to design and calibrate ultra-high-precision industrial robots (i.e. submicrometric precision robots). The first part of our study will cover the robot design aspects, from the choice of the kinematics with the help of systematic methodologies, to its mechanical design using flexure-based mechanisms. The second part of this paper will focus on calibration aspects: we propose a new calibration procedure able to handle and compensate for all the factors acting at nano scale on those robots, namely thermal effects, cutting forces and reference issues. By using this procedure, the accuracy reached after the calibration process is maintained even while such sources of inaccuracy are acting on the robot.