This paper presents a complete design and development procedure of a new XY micromanipulator for two-dimensional (2-D) micromanipulation applications. The manipulator possesses both a nearly decoupled motion and a simple structure, which is featured with parallel-kinematic architecture, flexure hinge-based joints, and piezoelectric actuation. Based on pseudo-rigid-body (PRB) simplification approach, the mathematical models predicting kinematics, statics, and dynamics of the XY stage have been obtained, which are verified by the finite-element analysis (FEA) and then integrated into dimension optimization via the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method. Moreover, a prototype of the micromanipulator is fabricated and calibrated using a microscope vision system, and visual servo control employing a modified PD controller is implemented for the accuracy improvement. The experiments discover that a workspace size of 260 μm × 260 μm with a 2-D positioning accuracy and repeatability around 0.73 and 1.02 μm respectively, can be achieved by the micromanipulator. © 2006 IEEE.