Design, implementation, and control of a six-axis compliant stage

This paper presents the development of a new compact six-axis compliant stage employing piezoelectric actuators to achieve six-axis actuation with nanometer resolution. The integration of direct metrology in the object space, based on real-time visual feedback, enables high-precision motion control. In order to achieve greater motion range, the simple and compact decoupled mechanical structure utilizes two-tap displacement amplifiers for in-plane motion and semibridge amplifiers for out-of-plane motion. The kinematic analysis of the stage is presented. Laterally sampled white light interferometry was implemented to measure the out-of-plane motion of the stage, and a measurement model associated with the designed target patterns is developed to estimate the in-plane motion in real time. Together, they form a visual tracking system and are integrated with the six-axis compliant stage to realize precision six-axis real-time visual servo-control. Experimental results demonstrate that the six-axis compliant stage has the motion range of 77.42 microm, 67.45 microm, 24.56 microm, 0.93 mrad, 0.95 mrad, and 3.10 mrad, and the resolution of +/-5 nm, +/-8 nm, +/-10 nm, +/-10 murad, +/-10 murad, and +/-20 murad for x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis translation and rotation, respectively.