Related papers: Flow-driven robotic navigation of microengineered …
To date, endovascular surgeries are performed using the golden standard of Fluoroscopy, which uses ionising radiation to visualise catheters and vasculature. Prolonged Fluoroscopic exposure is harmful for the patient and the clinician, and…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are few dynamic simulation tools available to accurately predict the motion or performance of untethered microrobots as they…
Swimming micro-organisms such as flagellated bacteria and sperm cells have fascinating locomotion capabilities. Inspired by their natural motion, there is an ongoing effort to develop artificial robotic nano-swimmers for potential in-body…
Locally broken symmetries are used across fields to transport matter, particles and information in preferential directions. Beyond local mechanisms, spatially distributed nonlinearities in crystalline media have enabled non-reciprocal…
We consider the dynamics of micro-sized, asymmetrically-coated thermoresponsive hydrogel ribbons (microgels) under periodic heating and cooling in the confined space between two planar surfaces. As the result of the temperature changes, the…
Transluminal minimally invasive surgery uses natural orifices and small incisions to access internal anatomical structures, promoting quicker recovery and reduced morbidity. However, navigating instruments--catheters and endoscopes--through…
Magnetically driven microparticles provide a versatile platform for probing and manipulating biological systems, yet the physical framework governing their actuation in complex environments remains only partially explored. Within the field…
Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…
We harness the momentum of light resonating inside a micro-droplet cavity, to experimentally generate micro-flows within the envelope of the drop. We 3D map these optically induced flows by using fluorescent nanoparticles; which reveals…
We present experimental evidence of multiple blood flow configurations in a relatively simple microfluidic network under constant inlet conditions. We provide evidence of multistability and unsteady dynamics and find good agreement with a…
Theoretical modeling of electroosmosis through conducting (ideally polarizable) nanochannels is reported. Based on the theory of induced charge electrokinetics, a novel nanofluidic system which possesses both adjustable ion selective…
Unsupervised video-based surgical instrument segmentation has the potential to accelerate the adoption of robot-assisted procedures by reducing the reliance on manual annotations. However, the generally low quality of optical flow in…
A current-aided inertial navigation framework is proposed for small autonomous underwater vehicles in long-duration operations (> 1 hour), where neither frequent surfacing nor consistent bottom-tracking are available. We instantiate this…
Important challenges in retinal microsurgery include prolonged operating time, inadequate force feedback, and poor depth perception due to a constrained top-down view of the surgery. The introduction of robot-assisted technology could…
Magnetic microrobots that swim through liquid media are of interest for minimally invasive medical procedures, bioengineering, and manufacturing. Many of the envisaged applications, such as micromanipulation and targeted cargo delivery,…
Fluid flow through intricate confining geometries often exhibits complex behaviors, certainly in porous materials, e.g. in groundwater flows or the operation of filtration devices and porous catalysts. However, it has remained extremely…
The one-to-one mapping of control inputs to actuator outputs results in elaborate routing architectures that limit how complex fluidic soft robot behaviours can currently become. Embodied intelligence can be used as a tool to counteract…
Soft underwater robots typically explore bioinspired designs at the expense of power efficiency when compared to traditional underwater robots, which limits their practical use in real-world applications. We leverage a fluidic closed-loop…
A flexible membrane deforming its shape in time can self-propel in a viscous fluid. Alternatively, if the membrane is anchored, its deformation will lead to fluid transport. Past work in this area focused on situations where the deformation…
Microfluidic techniques have been extensively developed to realize micro-total analysis systems in a small chip. For microanalysis, electro-magnetic forces have generally been utilized for the trapping of objects, but hydrodynamics has been…