3D motion control and target manipulation of small magnetic robot

Abstract

The Electromagnetic robots have received much attention because of their advantages of control agility and good precision. Most of the electromagnetic robots are controlled in two-dimensional motion. However, the environment in vivo is complicated and two-dimensional control is difficult to meet the complicated situation. In this paper, we propose a three-dimensional (3D) control method for the locomotion and manipulation of small magnetic robots. The robot can be controlled to move in 3D direction using visual feedback with an expert control algorithm. The velocity of the robot is nearly proportional to the applied current in the coils, and can reach 1, mm/s. To verify its performance, the robot is used to manipulate microspheres into a 3, ×, 3 array. The robot is expected to be an agile tools that could play important roles in micromanipulation and biomedical treatment