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HAMMR Time: Microscale 3D Printing Helps Swimming Microrobots Break Records

Purdue University researchers created speedy swimming robots — the width of a human hair with the ability to travel at 2 millimeters per second — using microscale 3D printing. The microrobots include a hard magnetic head and a soft hydrogel tail in a helix shape — mimicking the swimming behavior seen in sperm and other biological phenomena. Watch this video to learn more about what the team calls the Helical Adaptive Multi-material MicroRobot (HAMMR).

“We’ve been working on mobile microrobots for about 10 to 15 years – how to design them, how to make them, and how to control them, and ultimately how to use them,” said David Cappelleri  , Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “Because these robots are very small, we can’t attach a battery or any other kind of internal power source. So we power them externally, using magnetic fields.”

Topics:
Automation Motion Control Robotics

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 We've been working on mobile microrobots, probably  10 to 15 years here. We've been looking at how   to control them, how to design them, how to  make them. So these robots are very small,   so you can't put a battery on them.  So we use magnetic fields to control   these robots. So as long as the robots  have some kind of magnetic properties,   we can control them using an external magnetic  field. Now we're starting to work on some more   advanced microrobot prototypes now for functions  where they're not just static rigid objects. Can   they actually deform and change and be active?  We have now an adaptive tail, so we can change   the swimming properties of the robot based on its  environment to get it to swim more efficiently.  -That's why we have the helical tails attached  to the magnetic body. Helical tail is adaptive   because we design with some modulating  alternating hydrogel regions, from soft to  

    00:00:47 hard. Under different environments, the hydrogel  is going to deform into a different shape.  -So if we have a way to adapt the shape of the  robot, we can get more efficient swimming. Also if   we can change the shape, we could also change its  geometry, to go through small constricted areas   that we couldn't get there if it was a rigid body. -The robot is fabricated in Birck Nanotechnology   Center. The biggest challenge is how to get  those two materials together. So we have one   material for the magnetic head, and we  have another material for the helical   tail. So the thing is how to connect those two  together. We come up with the idea of combining   traditional microfabrication techniques and  the Nanoscribe 3D printing to get our robot.  We're talking about like tens to 50 microns in  dimensions for these objects. It's not like you   can take a nut in the bolt and bolt them together,  right? So this is very very small scales,  

    00:01:37 and any kind of impurity or speck of dirt or  leftover magnetic particle can wreak havoc on   the laser trying to 3D print. So figuring out a  way to make these things connect and get these   two manufacturing processes to work together  was a big key. These robots are designed to   swim where there is a fluidic environment in  the body. This could be in the blood vessels,   the reproductive tract. So we envision not only  for these be able to swim, but also to do some   therapeutic applications. So can we load a drug  onto these robots? Can we actually functionalize   them for diagnostic capabilities, add some other  functions for a biopsy? So these are some things   that we would like to do in the future. So the  first step was to get the robots to be able to   locomote in this environment, and then adapt  to this environment to get the best swimming   performance. And now that we're there, now we  can think about what can we do while we're there.