56 research outputs found

    Medical Microrobots

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    : Scientists around the world have long aimed to produce miniature robots that can be controlled inside the human body to aid doctors in identifying and treating diseases. Such microrobots hold the potential to access hard-to-reach areas of the body through the natural lumina. Wireless access has the potential to overcome drawbacks of systemic therapy, as well as to enable completely new minimally invasive procedures. The aim of this review is fourfold: first, to provide a collection of valuable anatomical and physiological information on the target working environments together with engineering tools for the design of medical microrobots; second, to provide a comprehensive updated survey of the technological state of the art in relevant classes of medical microrobots; third, to analyze currently available tracking and closed-loop control strategies compatible with the in-body environment; and fourth, to explore the challenges still in place, to steer and inspire future research

    Magnetic Field-Based Technologies for Lab-on-a-Chip Applications

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    In the last decades, LOC technologies have represented a real breakthrough in the field of in vitro biochemical and biological analyses. However, the integration of really complex functions in a limited space results extremely challenging and proper working principles should be identified. In this sense, magnetic fields revealed to be extremely promising. Thanks to the exploitation of external magnetic sources and to the integration of magnetic materials, mainly high aspect ratio micro-/nanoparticles, non-contact manipulation of biological and chemical samples can be enabled. In this chapter, magnetic field-based technologies, their basic theory, and main applications in LOC scenario will be described by foreseeing also a deeper interaction/integration with the typical technologies of microrobotics. Attention will be focused on magnetic separation and manipulation, by taking examples coming from traditional LOC devices and from microrobotics

    A Bioinspired Fluid-Filled Soft Linear Actuator

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    In bioinspired soft robotics, very few studies have focused on fluidic transmissions and there is an urgent need for translating fluidic concepts into realizable fluidic components to be applied in different fields. Nature has often offered an inspiring reference to design new efficient devices. Inspired by the working principle of a marine worm, the sipunculid species Phascolosoma stephensoni (Sipunculidae, Annelida), a soft linear fluidic actuator is here presented. The natural hydrostatic skeleton combined with muscle activity enables these organisms to protrude a part of their body to explore the surrounding. Looking at the hydrostatic skeleton and protrusion mechanism of sipunculids, our solution is based on a twofold fluidic component, exploiting the advantages of both pneumatic and hydraulic actuations and providing a novel fluidic transmission mechanism. The inflation of a soft pneumatic chamber is associated with the stretch of an inner hydraulic chamber due to the incompressibility of the liquid. Actuator stretch and forces have been characterized to determine system performance. In addition, an analytical model has been derived to relate the stretch ability to the inlet pressure. Three different sizes of prototypes were tested to evaluate the suitability of the proposed design for miniaturization. The proposed actuator features a strain equal to 40–50% of its initial length—depending on size—and output forces up to 18 N in the largest prototypes. The proposed bioinspired actuator expands the design of fluidic actuators and can pave the way for new approaches in soft robotics with potential application in the medical field
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