CAREER: Acoustic Vortex Robots for Contactless 6-Degrees-of-Freedom Object Manipulation

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This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award will fund research that enables robotic platforms to achieve contactless, high-resolution, 6-degrees-of-freedom (6-DOF) manipulation of nano-to-millimeter-sized objects, thereby prompting the progress of science. This project will support fundamental research to first develop new robotic end effectors, namely, contactless acoustic vortex end effectors, by understanding acoustic vortex-enabled object motions and finding solutions to control the motions. This project will develop acoustic vortex robots, which will leverage acoustic vortex end effectors integrated with robotic arms to enable contactless 6-DOF object manipulation with appealing features, including three-dimensional (3D) object rotation, 3D object translation, high translation accuracy (1.5 μm), wide translation range (200 mm), control of objects with different sizes and material properties, and noninvasive manipulation of objects shielded by barriers such as tissue and skull. This project will accelerate the development of future robotic technologies for biology and manufacturing applications such as handling delicate bioparticles for automated sorting and arranging single cells for bioprinting. Through education and outreach activities with the theme of acoustic object manipulation, this project will broaden the participation of underrepresented minorities, increase public engagement with science and technology, and provide learning and training opportunities for graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 students.This research aims to develop contactless acoustic vortex end effectors and acoustic vortex robots, by understanding acoustic vortex-vortex interaction and vortex-enabled object motions and addressing the questions of how to control the interaction and how to control the object motions. To achieve these objectives, the researchers will first establish theoretical models to study acoustic coaxial- and tri-vortex interactions, and numerical models to study the effects of coaxial- and tri-vortex on object motions. Based on the modeling results, coaxial vortex end effectors will be developed to trap an object and control its bidirectional rotation. Tri-vortex end effectors will then be developed to control the 3D rotation of the trapped object. End effectors based on micro-interdigital transducers will be developed to generate high-frequency, high-resolution acoustic vortex beams for manipulating micro/nano-objects. These end effectors will be integrated with robotic arms to develop acoustic vortex robots, and they will be validated through contactless object manipulation tests, such as arranging single cells for bioprinting, translating objects inside a biomimetic phantom, and rotating objects in regions shielded by tissue and skull barriers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.