Design and Validation of an Integrated Dual-Axis Microforce Sensor for 3-D Micromanipulation
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Accurate two-axis force measure-ment is important for three-dimensional (3-D) mi-cromanipulation of fragile biological samples, where normal gripping force alone cannot describe tangential friction, sliding, and load redistribution. This paper presents an integrated dual-axis force sensor for a 3-D electrothermal microgripper. The sensor employs an orthogonal thin-walled beam with locally arranged through-holes to enhance strain concentration in the strain-gauge region and reduce cross-axis coupling. A force–strain–voltage model and a matrix-based decoupling method are developed for two-axis force reconstruction. Fi-nite-element analysis shows linear force–strain re-sponses, with maximum simulated coupling errors of 0.524% and 0.516% under X- and Y-axis loading, respectively. Calibration experiments demonstrate millinewton-level force measurement with resolutions of 0.10 mN and 0.105 mN for the X- and Y-axis channels, respectively. An experimentally identified full 2 × 2 calibration matrix was obtained from oblique-loading data to compensate for residual cross-axis coupling. A seven-fold leave-one-force-level-out cross-validation was further performed to evaluate out-of-sample force reconstruction. Compared with the simpli-fied diagonal model, the full-matrix model reduced the overall mean reconstruction errors from 9.10% to 3.90% for the X-axis and from 13.84% to 2.87% for the Y-axis, with maximum cross-validated errors of 8.59% and 6.49%, respectively. Zebrafish embryo manipulation experiments showed stable normal gripping forces of 1.20±0.16 mN, maximum abso-lute tangential forces of 0.93±0.24 mN during rotation, and successful grasp–release in all eight tested embryos in the preliminary validation experiments. The reconstructed two-axis force signals further provided useful indicators for gripping/release states, tangential interaction, and inter-finger contact-force redistribution during rotation. These re-sults indicate that the proposed sensor improves force observability in biological micromanipulation.
Source: IEEE Sensors Journal
Authors: Guoning Si, Jianfei Gao, Xuerong Kang
Institution: University of Shanghai for Science and Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,645
OpenAlex ID: W7220921969