Reconfigurable magnetic microrobot swarm: Multimode transformation, locomotion, and manipulation
By Hui Xie, Mengmeng Sun, Xinjian Fan, Zhihua Lin, Weinan Chen, Lei Wang, Lixin Dong, Q. He. Science Robotics, 2019
641 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Magnetic microrobot swarms collectively perform tasks in a confined environment through multimode transformation and locomotion. Swimming microrobots that are energized by external magnetic fields exhibit a variety of intriguing collective behaviors, ranging from dynamic self-organization to coherent motion; however, achieving multiple, desired collective modes within one colloidal system to emulate high environmental adaptability and enhanced tasking capabilities of natural swarms is challenging. Here, we present a strategy that uses alternating magnetic fields to program hematite colloidal particles into liquid, chain, vortex, and ribbon-like microrobotic swarms and enables fast and reversible transformations between them. The chain is characterized by passing through confined narrow channels, and the herring school–like ribbon procession is capable of large-area synchronized manipulation, whereas the colony-like vortex can aggregate at a high density toward coordinated handling of heavy loads. Using the developed discrete particle simulation methods, we investigated generation mechanisms of these four swarms, as well as the “tank-treading” motion of the chain and vortex merging. In addition, the swarms can be programmed to steer in any direction with excellent maneuverability, and the vortex’s chirality can be rapidly switched with high pattern stability. This reconfigurable microrobot swarm can provide versatile collective modes to address environmental variations or multitasking requirements; it has potential to investigate fundamentals in living systems and to serve as a functional bio-microrobot system for biomedicine.
Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Mechanical Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/570f96e7d3ba821d494b47df9b6ab45999797d9e
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Biomedical Engineering
In Mechanical Engineering
Citations in the corpus
- Swarm Robotics: Past, Present, and Future (2021, background): “Current approaches to microrobots and nanorobots are not exploiting conventional hardware but are rather made of active colloidal particles [77], soft-bodied (biological) robots [78], bacteria-powered nanomachines [79], [80], and even controllable genetically engineered organisms [81].”