Becker, Aaron T.2019-09-10December 22018-12December 2https://hdl.handle.net/10657/4438Automated assembly at micro and nano-scale is essential for manufacturing smaller and inexpensive products at faster rates. Traditional micro-assembly and manipulation techniques involve micro-grippers and manipulators that have limited degrees of freedom when compared to their macro-scale counterparts. A major disadvantage of these techniques is that only one part can be manufactured at a time. Thus, it would be a significant progress if control algorithms are devised that can automatically assemble a huge quantity of small scale components. We present a novel approach towards micro-assembly which employs a large swarm of micro-particles, controlled by a global signal to assemble arbitrary 2D structures. The algorithm automatically generates a micro-factory layout for a given structure, and when this layout is actuated, it manufactures the required number of copies of the shape. We have analyzed the size and time complexity of the micro-factories and present several simulation and hardware results for the assembly task. Since the assembly process is performed in open-loop, the assembled parts could have errors, and in order to detect these errors, we sort them based on their shape.application/pdfengThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).MicroassemblyRobotics2019-09-10Thesisborn digital