Towards Mobile Microrobot Swarms for Additive Micromanufacturing

• Main Authors: David Cappelleri, Dimitrios Efthymiou, Ashesh Goswami, Nikolaos Vitoroulis, Michael Zavlanos
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2014-09-01
• Series: International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5772/58985

In this paper, a novel approach to achieving the independent control of multiple magnetic microrobots is presented. The approach utilizes a specialized substrate consisting of a fine grid of planar, MEMS-fabricated micro coils of the same size as the microrobots (≤ 500 μm). The coils can be used to generate real magnetic potentials and, therefore, attractive and repulsive forces in the workspace to control the trajectories of the microrobots. Initial work on modelling the coil and microrobot behavior is reported along with simulation results for navigating one and two microrobots along independent desired trajectories. Qualitative results from a scaled-up printed circuit board version of the specialized substrate operating on permanent magnets are presented and offer proof-of-concept results for the approach. These tests also provide insights for practical implementations of such a system, which are similarly reported. The ultimate goal of this work is to use swarms of independently controlled microrobots in advanced, additive manufacturing applications.