Electron Microscopes (EMs) are widespread in a wide scope of applications for their unique and powerful visualization capabilities. Several key-enabling technologies recently emerged and enable to achieve in-situ EMs (1) local additive/substractive fabrication through Ion Beams at the sub-micrometer scale (2) 3D and dynamic motions through nanopositioning robots. These technologies have already proven to be fruitful, in particular for the manufacturing of nano-devices. However, they still rely on usual planar, static and mostly teleoperated approaches which drastically limits the reproducibility, speed, automation capabilities, scaling-up and often induces unreversible damages on the studied sample or manufactured device.
In this scope, DyNaBot will investigate in deep the paradigm of nanorobotic motion generation in EMs to bring them dynamic and 3D-nanorobotics capabilities for the nanofactory of the future. Based on this approach, that is disruptive at this scale, DyNaBot aims at revolutionizing the capabilities of EMs by transforming them to nanofactories enabling every user to achieve complex manufacturing (additive, substractive), manipulation, assembly and characterization tasks at the sub-micrometer scale. To this end, the project will notably target beyond the state-of-the-art works by proposing a compact and agile robotic structure capable of dynamically controlling physical interactions between robot and object in the highly variable environment of EMs by active sensing and advanced control techniques. A digital twin integrating the dynamic multiphysical model of the platform and strongly relying on the observation of weak signals will allow an intuitive use centered on human expertise. FEMTO-ST, ISIR and CEA-List will bring their unique complementary expertise in modeling and control for nanorobotics as well as in human-robot interactions. They will propose two demonstrators to achieve 3D dynamic nanorobotic tasks representative of typical scientific and industrial applications.