Automated Assembly of the ATLAS ITK Pixel Detector using the Pick&Place Technique

The new upgrade program for LHC foreseen for the 2026, will lead to the replacement of the entire tracking system of the ATLAS experiment (THE ATLAS COLLABORATION, JINST, 3 (2008) S08003). The ATLAS vertex detector will be a silicon pixel detector, the largest ever built (13 m2 active area), with a very high spatial granularity (50 mu m x 50 mu m), radiation hard (up to 1 Grad) and featuring an unprecedented data rate (thousands of optical links at 5.12 Gbps). The Italian ATLAS Collaboration has the responsibility for the construction, test, and commissioning of about thirty detector rings that will be mechanically located on three cylinders. In this paper, we describe the automated assembly technique developed by the Italian sites involved in the pixel ring construction.