Purdue researchers are using "mini force field technology" to independently control individual microrobots operating within groups.
"The reason we want independent movement of each robot is so they can do cooperative manipulation tasks," said David Cappelleri, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University. "Think of ants. They can independently move, yet all work together to perform tasks such as lifting and moving things."
Because the robots are too small to feature on-board battery power, the team developed a system for controlling the bots with individual magnetic fields from an array of tiny planar coils.
The microbots are magnetic disks that slide across a surface. While the versions studied are around 2 millimeters in diameter – about twice the size of a pinhead - the researchers aim to create microbots that are around 250 microns in diameter, or roughly the size of a dust mite.
Independently controlled microbots working in groups may be valuable in building microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, minuscule machines that could have numerous applications from medicine to homeland security. Microbots equipped with probe-like "force sensors," for example, may be used to detect cancer cells in a biopsy.
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