Micro-Robotics for Remote Magnetic Manipulation and Actuation

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The proposed research program aims to design and control groups of micro-scale robots for biotechnology, micro-manufacturing and medical applications. Such a micro-robotic system is controlled and powered using a magnetic coil system capable of applying magnetic forces and moments remotely to sub-mm micro-fabricated robots. Micro-robot systems promise to provide unprecedented access to small confined spaces in a non-invasive manner due to their small size and capabilities for parallel or distributed operation.**Nature has proven to be a remarkable source of inspiration for the design and optimization of engineered systems. Inspired by swarms of bacteria and social insects, large numbers of mobile micro-robots are indispensable for future health-care applications for minimally invasive disease diagnosis and treatment inside the human body, biotechnology applications inside lab-on-a-chip type of microfluidic devices, reconfigurable micro-systems for novel human-machine interfaces, programmable matter and other applications, and mobile sensor network applications for monitoring their environment. While many mobile micro-robots with various locomotion capabilities such as walking and swimming have been proposed in the literature for some of these potential applications, these micro-robot solutions suffer from lack of scalability, lack of on-board sensing and tools, and limited localization capability. This research program aims to introduce new fabrication and control techniques to create useful micro-scale robotic agents with on-board functionality for manipulating micro-scale objects such as micro-parts in a micro-factory or living cells in a microfluidic chip. The robotics community is in need of new approaches to power and control of small-scale agents for high-impact applications in remote areas.**The research has three focus areas: The design of novel mobile micro-tools for use in confined spaces by a mobile microrobot; multi-degree of freedom (DOF) actuation of such tools and systems; and use of microrobot systems for practical applications. The approach used wtill require new research in the fundamentals of magnetic actuation. It will involve investigating the responses of multiple different types of magnetic materials to the same input signals for multi-DOF actuation of complex mechanisms and robotic systems. This will require a new approach to micro-robot fabrication, materials and controls techniques.**At the micro-scale, such actuation will be used to create on-board tools for mobile microrobots. A mobile micro-gripper design which can be integrated into microrobots which move precisely in planar or 3D environments. Such a capability will allow for the unrestrained carrying of objects in 2D and 3D for pick-and-place and cargo delivery applications in microfluidics, healthcare or microfactories. This will require new fabrication methods and unique mechanism synthesis to accommodate the unique challenges present for micro-scale mechanisms.**These actuation techniques will also be researched for use in larger centimeter-scale systems which require remote actuation such as miniature walking robots. Previous approaches to centimeter-scale walking robots have been limited by the inclusion of miniature batteries, computers and actuators on-board in a small package. Thus, this research will allow for the creation of walking robots much smaller than those created before.