Remote Actuation and Control of Multiple Magnetic Micro-Robots.

摘要

Untethered micro-robots, under 1 mm in size, have the potential to access small spaces for remote manipulation or sensing. Significant challenges arise in the miniaturization of robots due to the limited scaling of on-board power and computation sources. Thus, such actuation power and computation must be generated off-board and wirelessly transmitted to the microrobot, resulting in simple micro-robot designs. Due to this simplicity, low cost, and small size, micro-robots could be well suited to work in large teams.;This thesis concerns the use of externally-generated magnetic fields, created by electromagnetic coils outside the workspace, to provide power and commands simultaneously to micro-robot teams. The flexibility of this power and control scheme leads to great potential for laboratory as well as clinical applications of micro-robots in micro-manipulation and medicine. However, a major limitation of magnetic actuation from external coils is that all micro-robots in the workspace receive the same control signals.;Several methods are introduced for the remote addressing of micro-scale magnetic actuators for use in untethered locomotion and micro-fluidic applications. These results constitute the first methods developed for the control of multiple magnetic micro-robots which doesn't require a specially patterned operating surface, and the first method for operation in 3D.;In addition to addressable mobile micro-robots, micro-pumps and micro-grippers, the addressing methods presented are also applied for the creation of reconfigurable modular assemblies made of tens of micro-robots, which are themselves used as building blocks. Addressing methods are used to independently control each module for assembly, reconfiguration and disassembly.