Untethered Small Scale Robots For Biomedical Applications

Untethered Small-Scale Robots for Biomedical Applications introduces the principle, design, fabrication and application of small-scale robots for biomedical applications. Robots in the scale of nanometer, micrometer and millimeter are described in detail, along with their impact on the field of biomedical engineering. The selected examples of robots across different scales are of the most essential and innovative designs in a small-scale robot with various application settings for biomechanics characterization, drug delivery and surgical procedure. The representative robots represented operate robustly and safely in complex physiological environments where they have a transformative impact in bioengineering and healthcare. This book will lead the audience to the field of small-scale robots through the description of the physics in the small scale, design and fabrication of small-scale robots, and how these robots may impact the future of biomedical studies and minimally-invasive surgical procedures. Provides a comprehensive review of the current advances in biomedical untethered mobile milli/microrobots Describes the most representative small-scale robots in detail, including design, fabrication, control and function aspects Presents the imminent potential impacts of biomedical microrobots Discusses the existing challenges and emerging concepts associated with designing such a miniaturized robot for operation inside a biological environment for biomedical applications

This book contains selected contributions from some of the most renowned researchers in the field of small-scale robotics, based in large part on invited presentations from the workshop “The Different Sizes of Small-Scale Robotics: from Nano-, to Millimeter-Sized Robotic Systems and Applications,” which was held in conjunction with the conjunction with the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2013), in May 2013 in Karlsruhe, Germany. With many potential applications in areas such as medicine, manufacturing or search and rescue, small-scale robotics represent a new emerging frontier in robotics research. The aim of this book is to provide an insight to ongoing research and future directions in this novel, continuously evolving field, which lies at the intersection of engineering, computer science, material science and biology.

Collective Behavior of Magnetic Micro/Nanorobots: Control, Imaging, and Applications reviews recent advances in the design and construction of magnetic collective micro/nanorobot systems, and promotes the bridging of the gap between their theoretical investigation and practical applications. By summarizing the recent progress in control, imaging, and biomedical applications of collective micro/nanorobots, the authors show the big picture of micro/nanorobotics and the roadmap of collective micro/nanorobots. They then discuss the control, imaging, and biomedical applications of collective micro/nanorobots, respectively, demonstrating the state-of-the-art techniques and ideas for designing systems of collective micro/nanorobots that can help researchers have a better understanding and further stimulate the development of such an exciting field. This book is suitable for scientists, engineers, and students involved in the study of robotics, control, materials, and mechanical/electrical engineering.

Reference on achieving contactless manipulation of soft robots, detailing high level concepts and perspectives and technical skills of soft robots Untethered Miniature Soft Robots: Materials, Fabrications, and Applications introduces the emerging field of miniature soft robots and summarizes the recent rapid development in the field to date, describing different types of functional materials to build miniature soft robots, such as silicone elastomer, carbon-based materials, hydrogels, liquid crystal polymer, flexible ferrofluid, and liquid metal, and covering the material properties, fabrication strategies, and functionalities in soft robots together with their underlying mechanisms. The book discusses magnetically, thermally, optically, and chemically actuated soft robots in depth, explores the many specific applications of miniature soft robots in biomedical, environmental, and electrical fields and summarizes the development of miniature soft robots based on intelligent materials, actuation mechanisms, soft matter, fabrication strategies, actuation, and locomotion principles. In closing, the text summarizes the opportunities and challenges faced by miniature soft robots, providing expert insight into the possible futures of this field. Written by four highly qualified academics, Untethered Miniature Soft Robots covers sample topics such as: Soft elastomer-based robots with programmable magnetization profiles and untethered soft robots based on template-aiding Working mechanisms of carbon-based materials, covering light-induced expansion and shrinkage, and humidity-induced deformation Designing microscale building blocks, modular assembly of building blocks based on Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) matrix, and inverse and forward design of modular morphing systems Material designs of magnetic liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) systems, multiple-stimuli responsiveness of magnetic LCE systems, and adaptive locomotion of magnetic LCE-based robots Controllable deformation and motion behaviors, as well as applications of ferrofluids droplet robots (FDRs), including cargo capturing, object sorting, liquid pumping/mixing, and liquid skin. Providing highly detailed and up-to-date coverage of the topic, Untethered Miniature Soft Robots serves as an invaluable and highly comprehensive reference for researchers working in this promising field across a variety of disciplines, including materials scientists, mechanical and electronics engineers, polymer chemists, and biochemists.

Untethered Miniature Soft Robots Reference on achieving contactless manipulation of soft robots, detailing high level concepts and perspectives and technical skills of soft robots Untethered Miniature Soft Robots: Materials, Fabrications, and Applications introduces the emerging field of miniature soft robots and summarizes the recent rapid development in the field to date, describing different types of functional materials to build miniature soft robots, such as silicone elastomer, carbon-based materials, hydrogels, liquid crystal polymer, flexible ferrofluid, and liquid metal, and covering the material properties, fabrication strategies, and functionalities in soft robots together with their underlying mechanisms. The book discusses magnetically, thermally, optically, and chemically actuated soft robots in depth, explores the many specific applications of miniature soft robots in biomedical, environmental, and electrical fields and summarizes the development of miniature soft robots based on soft matter, fabrication strategies, locomotion principles, sensing and actuation mechanisms. In closing, the text summarizes the opportunities and challenges faced by miniature soft robots, providing expert insight into the possible futures of this field. Written by four highly qualified academics, Untethered Miniature Soft Robots covers sample topics such as: Soft elastomer-based robots with programmable magnetization profiles and untethered soft robots based on template-aiding Working mechanisms of carbon-based materials, covering light-induced expansion and shrinkage, and humidity-induced deformation Designing microscale building blocks, modular assembly of building blocks based on Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) matrix, and inverse and forward design of modular morphing systems Material designs of magnetic liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) systems, multiple-stimuli responsiveness of magnetic LCE systems, and adaptive locomotion of magnetic LCE-based robots Controllable deformation and motion behaviors, as well as applications of ferrofluids droplet robots (FDRs), including cargo capturing, object sorting, liquid pumping/mixing, and liquid skin. Providing highly detailed and up-to-date coverage of the topic, Untethered Miniature Soft Robots serves as an invaluable and highly comprehensive reference for researchers working in this promising field across a variety of disciplines, including materials scientists, mechanical and electronics engineers, polymer chemists, and biochemists.

Scientific and engineering literature extensively discusses untethered miniature devices, also called bots, as those parts of medical robotic systems that can be manipulated remotely within the human body. There is clear evidence that this topic has gained significant traction based on the spike in publication over the past seven years (Koleoso et al., 2020). Robotic systems that employ micro- and millimeter size bots are thought to have numerous potential medical applications including drug delivery (Jang et al., 2019), localized heating or cooling, cessation of bleeding, clearing of occlusions, establishing a diagnosis based on sensing or biopsy, and minimally invasive surgeries. Most studies focuses on the actuation and control of such bots in fluid environment, typically at low Reynolds numbers. Yet, many medical applications would involve soft tissues, rather than fluids. While controlling tethered devices, such as needles, based on appropriate models of interaction with tissue has been the subject of considerable interest. However, no similar work has been published for untethered miniature devices. The goal of the present thesis is to develop trajectory planning and control methods for untethered solid millimeter size bots in soft tissue under the action of magnetic force. This study employs a recently developed model describing the interaction of untethered bots with soft materials during bot motion by implementing a numerical simulation of the model. Given the highly non-linear and past trajectory (history) dependent nature of the interaction with the medium, in addition to significant model parameter variability throughout soft media, the present thesis hypothesizes that a trajectory control based on the so-called Sliding Mode Control (SMC) method will make it possible for a bot to follow a large class of practical trajectories accurately. Numerical simulations of the proposed SMC method were conducted and experimentally validated for a class of trajectories that could be well approximated by circular and straight segments. The robustness of the proposed method was analyzed numerically by simulating trajectories in media with random variations of various model parameters as well as in the presence of significant delays in the feedback signal used to estimate the bot position. All the work carried out in this thesis applies to bots that are spherical making it possible to simplify the model, trajectory control, and their experimental validation. Furthermore, experimental validations are limited in this work to bots that are on the order of millimeters in diameter. While smaller bots may be of interest in medicine, they would be significantly harder to actuate and image during experimental validation experiments. At the same time, millimeter size bots are commensurate with the typical dimensions of needles widely employed in medical applications. Keywords: Medical Robotics, Micro Robots, Motion control, Robophysics, Soft Media, Untethered Device

This book describes the substantial progress recently made in the development of micro and nanorobotic systems, utilizing magnetic, optical, acoustic, electrical, and other actuation fields. It covers several areas of micro and nanorobotics including robotics, materials science, and biomedical engineering. Field-Driven Micro and Nanorobots for Biology and Medicine provides readers with fundamental physics at the micro and nano scales, state-of-the-art technical advances in field-driven micro and nanorobots, and applications in biological and biomedical disciplines.

This book takes small robots as the research object, analyzes and studies the introduction foundation of small robots, mechanical structure design of robots, appearance design of robots, innovative design of robot utility models, and overall invention design of robots, and analyzes them in the form of cases with progressive research ideas. This book can be used as a learning book for robot research enthusiasts, undergraduates and postgraduates of related majors, and also a research guide for machine researchers. This book mainly analyzes and studies small robots. The main research contents include: Chapter 1 introduces and summarizes the foundation of small robots, summarizes and analyzes the development trend of small robots; The second chapter mainly studies the appearance design and cases of the robot; The third chapter is the structure design and case analysis of the robot; The fourth chapter studies the overall invention and design of the robot; The fifth chapter studies the robot control simulation software. The relevant research of this book is supported by the construction project of Yunnan Land and Resources Vocational College, Science and Technology Innovation Team, team name: Robot Application Science and Technology Innovation Team, Project number: 2021KJTD02. Due to the rapid development of robot research, many new methods and contents cannot be updated in time. In addition, the author’s level is limited, and there are some inappropriate points in the book. Please comment and correct them.