Control of Multiple Identical Mobile Microrobots for Collaborative Tasks Using External Distributed Magnetic Fields

The collaboration of microrobot teams has attracted considerable attention, particularly in the field of micro/nano manipulation. Achieving independent control and motion planning of multiple magnetic microrobots for coordinated movements is one of the most important tasks that is still unsolved. In this paper, a 12
$\times$
12 coil array system is developed to generate a series of localized magnetic fields that enable simultaneous control of multiple identical magnetic microrobots, allowing teams of microrobots to collaborate in parallel for micromanipulation tasks. First, the structure of the microcoil is optimized based on the finite element model to increase the strength and gradient of the magnetic field, which in turn enhances the driving performance of the system. Meanwhile, an improved multi-target tracking algorithm that utilizes kernel correlation filtering (KCF) and image contour detection (ICD) techniques is proposed to improve the tracking accuracy of microrobots. In addition, collaborative planning for multiple magnetic microrobots is also achieved with the combination of the conflict-based search (CBS) algorithm. Finally, the developed system is tested with extensive physical experiments. Especially, experiments on magnetic droplet transport with two microrobots are also conducted. The results impressively demonstrated the effectiveness of the devised system and the proposed methods.
Note to Practitioners
—This article is motivated by the recent wide interest in magnetic microrobots. Actuated by external magnetic field, magnetic microrobots can wirelessly perform targeted delivery/therapy and other micro-assembly tasks. To facilitate collaboration between microrobots, independent control of each microrobot is desirable. However, due to the interaction between magnetic microrobots and the global magnetic field, the collaboration of multiple microrobots presents great challenges. Therefore, several coil-array-based systems have been developed. In this paper, we develop a magnetic actuation system from both hardware and software aspects for the collaborative motion of multiple magnetic microrobots. The coil structure is optimized to enhance the driving performance of the devised system, and a fused multi-target tracking algorithm is proposed to improve the tracking accuracy. In combination with the CBS algorithm, collision-free paths are planned for multiple identical microrobots. The experimental results show that the constructed system and proposed methods can realize coordinated motion of multiple identical magnetic microrobots, which has enormous potential for some biomedical applications.