Microrobots Controlled by 'Mini Forcefields' May Help in Medicine

Scientists have created microrobots that can be controlled by a technology that can be likened to "mini force fields." The new technology is aimed and using the tiny machines in areas that include manufacturing and medicine.

Until now, it was only possible to control groups of microbots to move generally in unison. Now, the new technology allows these microrobots to be moved independently.

"The reason we want independent movement of each robot is so they can do cooperative manipulation tasks," said David Cappelleri, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Think of ants. They can independently move, yet all work together to perform tasks such as lifting and moving things. We want to be able to control them individually so we can have some robots here doing one thing, and some robots there doing something else at the same time."

In this case, the researchers developed a system to control the robots with individual magnetic fields from an array of tiny planar coils. The robots are too small to put batteries on them, so they can't have onboard power. Instead, you need to use an external way to power them; in this case, the scientists use magnetic fields to generate forces on the robot.

"The approach we came up with works at the microscale, and it will be the first one that can give truly independent motion of multiple microrobots in the same workspace because we are able to produce localized fields as opposed to a global field," said Cappelleri. "What we can do now, instead of having these coils all around on the outside, is to print planar coils directly onto the substrate."

The findings are published in the journal Micromachines.

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