Xiuzhen Tang and Laliphat Manamanchaiyaporn
Soft actuators, soft robotics, magnetic manipulation
Among the development of technology, a large number of medical devices have been designed, improved, and implemented in various forms and functions to facilitate therapy and treatment (e.g., medical guidewires, catheters, and implants). Controllability, real-time response, size, and non-toxicity of the devices are critical requirements to operate in the blind, unstructured, and fluidic environments of biomedical regions. Here, a swimming soft-milli-robot has been developed as an untethered swimming robot to fulfil the remote operation in such that regions. The robot employs magnetic property as a motor-less mechanism powered by the dynamic magnetic field. Non-uniform magnetisation embedded in the soft structure allows the robot to propagate the body-wave deformation utilising high-degree of freedom provided by magnetic compliance for swimming in fluid. The robot is experimented to investigate the swimming performance under the different control parameters. The results report that the swimming velocity is directly proportional to the strength and frequency of the actuating magnetic field, and it can swim with the fastest velocity of about 5.5 mm/s, under 15 mT and 13 Hz of the field. On the other hand, swimming velocity is dramatically dropped as the frequency is over 13 Hz. The performance of the robot is capable of applying for various purposes, especially when the demand concerns non-harm, small-scale size, soft interface, and remote controllability.
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