TOWARDS MICROROBOTS ON CHIP (MOC) : FIRST PROTOTYPE AND PERSPECTIVES Joël Agnus 1 , Jean-Marc Breguet 2 , Nicolas Chaillet 1 , Olivier Cois 3 , Antoine Ferreira 4 , Pierre Melchior 3 , Claude Pellet 5 , Jocelyn Sabatier 3 1 Laboratoire d'Automatique de Besançon (LAB) – UMR CNRS 6596 - France 2 Institut de Production et Robotique (IPR), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) - Switzerland 3 Laboratoire d'Automatique, Productique, Signal et Image (LAP) - UMR CNRS 5131 – Bordeaux - France 4 Laboratoire de Vision et Robotique (LVR) - UPRES EA 2078 – Bourges - France 5 Laboratoire d’études de l’intégration des composants et systèmes électroniques (IXL) - UMR CNRS 5818 - Bordeaux - France E-mails: joel.agnus@ens2m.fr - jean-marc.breguet@epfl.ch Abstract This paper deals with the MOC, i.e. “Microrobot On Chip” concept which corresponds to the development of compact, inexpensive and easily “plug and use” microrobotic chips (as it is the usual case with electronic chips). A first prototype of a six degrees of freedom micromanipulator MOC illustrates this concept. 1 Introduction Production tools undergo a constant process of miniaturization. Technical, economical, as well as environmental reasons motivate this process. The research in the field of the Microfactory and Nanofactory addresses these issues [1, 2]. In this paper we present an innovative concept, called “Microrobots On Chip (MOC)”, allowing to realize complex devices with several embedded functions in a very compact overall size and potentially inexpensive products. A first prototype of a six degrees of freedom micromanipulator is also described. 2 Prototype of MOC 2.1 General features Usually operations in the microworld involve systems with very accurate and efficient but also complex and expensive devices. The MOC concept corresponds to the idea of developing high resolution, compact, inexpensive and easy to plug-and-use