Welcome to the Smart Surface Project

The Smart Surface project began on April 2007 and ended on October 2010. Smart surface was funded by the ANR (ANR 06 ROBO 0009) and assembled teams from five laboratories (InESS, FEMTO-ST, LAAS, LIFC, LIMMS). The Smart Surface project has created different kinds of MEMS surfaces able to manipulate, convey, and sort small planar objects. The results of the Smart surface project have already been published in 9 journal papers, 13 conference papers, and 5 PhD thesis. It received an award, the International Microtechnology Trade Fair Special Jury Prize at Micronora, in 2010.

The work done concerned the modeling and formal checking of the Smart Surface concept, the design and fabrication using MEMS techniques, the recognition of parts moving on the surface, and the control laws for conveying and positioning micro-objects.

Several prototypes of pneumatic surfaces (passive and active) had been developed by using and developing micromachining techniques in the MIMENTO technology centre in Besancon. The prototypes and the algorithms were validated on an experimental platform using a CCD camera that emulates a distributed architecture. Other outcomes of the Smart Surface project are distributed recognition algorithms and decentralized control laws.

Watch the project video (46MB avi file)

Since 2011, nearly the same teams work on the Smart Blocks project which is the straigth successor of the Smart Surface project.