Environmental isolation platform for microrobot system development

Abstract

Environmental isolation of a microrobot is important to achieve the demanding operating specifications intrinsic to such a system. Our experience with the current generation microrobot, MR1, indicates the next generation microrobot, MR2, will require a high degree of isolation from the mechanical, thermal, electromagnetic, and optical environment of a typical laboratory. Accordingly, this paper presents the design, construction, and isolation test results of an environmental isolation platform built to house MR2 and its many subsystems under development in our laboratory. Our design approach used qualitative estimates of the magnitudes of external environmental noise acceptable to microrobot operation to determine the required attenuation of each noise input. The resulting platform consisted of a custom environmental enclosure mounted on a modified commercial vibration isolation optical table. The performance measurements quantified the attenuation of each unwanted disturbance within the frequency bands of interest and a final test was made with a laser heterodyne interferometer installed on the platform in a typical laboratory environment. The results of this experiment show that the isolation specifications required for microrobot operation were met thereby verifying our platform design. We expect that our design can be used in environmental isolation of not only microrobots but also other sensitive electro-optomechanical instruments.