Related papers: Stress-Based Navigation for Microscopic Robots in …
Objects moving in fluids experience patterns of stress on their surfaces determined by the geometry of nearby boundaries. Flows at low Reynolds number, as occur in microscopic vessels such as capillaries in biological tissues, have…
Microscopic robots could perform tasks with high spatial precision, such as acting in biological tissues on the scale of individual cells, provided they can reach precise locations. This paper evaluates the feasibility of in vivo locomotion…
Autonomous ocean-exploring vehicles have begun to take advantage of onboard sensor measurements of water properties such as salinity and temperature to locate oceanic features in real time. Such targeted sampling strategies enable more…
Current developments in molecular electronics, motors and chemical sensors could enable constructing large numbers of devices able to sense, compute and act in micron-scale environments. Such microscopic machines, of sizes comparable to…
Many different robots have been designed and built to work under water. In many cases, researchers have chosen to use bio-inspired platforms. In most cases, the main goal of the fish inspired robots has been set to autonomously swim and…
We discuss the scaling laws for the flow generated in a viscous fluid by a wave propagating along a solid boundary. This has applications to the displacement of tiny objects on solids, under the effect of progressive surface waves and for…
Microscopic robots could perform tasks with high spatial precision, such as acting on precisely-targeted cells in biological tissues. Some tasks may benefit from robots that change shape, such as elongating to improve chemical gradient…
Navigation is one of the most heavily studied problems in robotics, and is conventionally approached as a geometric mapping and planning problem. However, real-world navigation presents a complex set of physical challenges that defies…
The need to develop models to predict the motion of microrobots, or robots of a much smaller scale, moving in fluids in a low Reynolds number regime, and in particular, in non Newtonian fluids, cannot be understated. The article develops a…
A wide range of microorganisms, e.g. bacteria, propel themselves by rotation of soft helical tails, also known as flagella. Due to the small size of these organisms, viscous forces overwhelm inertial effects and the flow is at low Reynolds…
While magnetic micro-robots have demonstrated significant potential across various applications, including drug delivery and microsurgery, the open issue of precise navigation and control in complex fluid environments is crucial for in vivo…
In this study, we use numerical simulations to investigate the flow field induced by a single magnetic microrobot rotating with a constant angular speed about an axis perpendicular to an underlying surface. A parallel solver for steady…
Artificial gliders are designed to disperse as they settle through a fluid, requiring precise navigation to reach target locations. We show that a compact glider settling in a viscous fluid can navigate by dynamically adjusting its…
A finite-element algorithm for computing free-surface flows driven by arbitrary body forces is presented. The algorithm is primarily designed for the microfluidic parameter range where (i) the Reynolds number is small and (ii) force-driven…
Robots need to be able to work in multiple different environments. Even when performing similar tasks, different behaviour should be deployed to best fit the current environment. In this paper, We propose a new approach to navigation, where…
In the study of microscopic flows, self-propulsion has been particularly topical in recent years, with the rise of miniature artificial swimmers as a new tool for flow control, low Reynolds number mixing, micromanipulation or even drug…
Navigation and motion control of a robot to a destination are tasks that have historically been performed with the assumption that contact with the environment is harmful. This makes sense for rigid-bodied robots where obstacle collisions…
We investigate the scenario that a robot needs to reach a designated goal after taking a sequence of appropriate actions in a non-static environment that is partially structured. One application example is to control a marine vehicle to…
The navigation of micro-robots in complex flow environments is controlled by rheotaxis, the reorientation with respect to flow gradients. Here we demonstrate how payloads can be exploited to enhance the motion against flows. Using fully…
Minimally invasive medical procedures, such as endovascular catheterization, have drastically reduced procedure time and associated complications. However, many regions inside the body, such as in the brain vasculature, still remain…