Yigit Berk, Alapan Yunus, Sitti Metin
Physical Intelligence Department Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems 70569 Stuttgart Germany.
School of Medicine and School of Engineering Koc University 34450 Istanbul Turkey.
Adv Sci (Weinh). 2019 Jan 23;6(6):1801837. doi: 10.1002/advs.201801837. eCollection 2019 Mar 20.
Collective control of mobile microrobotic swarms is indispensable for their potential high-impact applications in targeted drug delivery, medical diagnostics, parallel micromanipulation, and environmental sensing and remediation. Without integrated electronics for sensing and actuation, current microrobotic systems should rely on physical interactions among individual microrobots for local communication and cooperation. Here, it is shown that mobile microrobotic swarms with well-defined collective behavior can be designed by engineering magnetic interactions among individual units. Microrobots, dynamically self-assembled from magnetic microparticles into linear chains, locomote on surfaces in response to a precessing magnetic field. Control over precessing magnetic field allows engineering attractive and repulsive interactions among microrobots and, thus, collective order with well-defined spatial organization and stable parallel operation over macroscale distances (≈1 cm) and through confining obstacles. The design approach described here addresses programmable assembly, propulsion, and collective behavior of dense mobile microrobot swarms simultaneously by engineering magnetic interactions and dynamic actuation of microrobots. The presented approach will advance swarm microrobotics by enabling facile and rapid formation of self-organized and reconfigurable microrobotic swarms with programmable collective order and stability.
对移动微型机器人集群进行集体控制对于其在靶向药物递送、医学诊断、并行微操纵以及环境传感与修复等潜在的高影响力应用而言不可或缺。由于缺乏用于传感和驱动的集成电子设备，当前的微型机器人系统应依赖单个微型机器人之间的物理相互作用来进行局部通信与协作。在此，研究表明通过设计单个单元之间的磁相互作用，可以构建具有明确集体行为的移动微型机器人集群。微型机器人由磁性微粒动态自组装成线性链，在旋转磁场作用下在表面移动。对旋转磁场的控制能够实现微型机器人之间吸引和排斥相互作用的设计，进而形成具有明确空间组织且能在宏观距离（约1厘米）上稳定并行运行并穿越限制障碍物的集体秩序。这里所描述的设计方法通过设计微型机器人的磁相互作用和动态驱动方式，同时解决了密集移动微型机器人集群的可编程组装、推进以及集体行为问题。所提出的方法将通过实现具有可编程集体秩序和稳定性的自组织且可重构微型机器人集群的便捷快速形成，推动集群微型机器人技术的发展。
