Related papers: Swarm Control of Magnetically Actuated Millirobots
Collective control of mobile microrobotic swarms is indispensable for their potential high-impact applications in targeted drug delivery, medical diagnostics, parallel micromanipulation, and environmental sensing and remediation. Lack of…
An external magnetic field can be used to remotely control small-scaled robots, making them promising candidates for diverse biomedical and engineering applications. We showed that our magnetically actuated millirobot is highly agile and…
This paper investigates how a novel paradigm called group-control can be effectively used for motion planning for microrobot swarms in a global field. We prove that Small-Time Local Controllability (STLC) in robot positions is achievable…
An important problem in microrobotics is how to control a large group of microrobots with a global control signal. This paper focuses on controlling a large-scale swarm of MicroStressBots with on-board physical finite-state machines. We…
We present a method for the control of robot swarms using two subsets of robots: a larger group of simple, oblivious robots (which we call the workers) that is governed by simple local attraction forces, and a smaller group (the guides)…
Micro- and molecular-robotic systems act as large-scale swarms. Capabilities of sensing, communication and information processing are very limited on these scales. This short position paper describes a swarm-based minimalistic approach,…
Small-scale robots offer significant potential in minimally-invasive medical procedures. Due to the nature of soft biological tissues, however, robots are exposed to complex environments with various challenges in locomotion, which is…
Collective intelligence and autonomy of robot swarms can be improved by enabling the individual robots to become aware they are the constituent units of a larger whole and what is their role. In this study, we present an algorithm to enable…
Modular small-scale robots offer the potential for on-demand assembly and disassembly, enabling task-specific adaptation in dynamic and constrained environments. However, existing modular magnetic platforms often depend on workspace…
The ability to have multiple magnetic robots operate independently in the same workspace would increase the clinical potential of these systems allowing collaborative operation. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of actuating two…
Swarm robotics is a creative method of organizing multi-robot structures, consisting of many basic robots influenced by communal insects. The greatest astonishing attribute of swarm robots is their capacity to function together to…
Microrobotics has the potential to revolutionize many applications including targeted material delivery, assembly, and surgery. The same properties that promise breakthrough solutions---small size and large populations---present unique…
Coordination of movement and configuration in robotic swarms is a challenging endeavor. Deciding when and where each individual robot must move is a computationally complex problem. The challenge is further exacerbated by difficulties…
Small-scale robots hold great potential for targeted cargo delivery in minimally-inv asive medicine. However, current robots often face challenges to locomote efficiently on slip pery biological tissue surfaces, especially when loaded with…
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…
In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a robust motion formation distributed control algorithm for a team of mobile robots. The primary task for the team is to form a geometric shape, which can be freely translated and…
Self-organized aggregation is a well studied behavior in swarm robotics as it is the pre-condition for the development of more advanced group-level responses. In this paper, we investigate the design of decentralized algorithms for a swarm…
The deployment of simple emergent behaviors in swarm robotics has been well-rehearsed in the literature. A recent study has shown how self-aggregation is possible in a multitask approach -- where multiple self-aggregation task instances…
Swarm robotic systems are mainly inspired by swarms of socials insects and the collective emergent behavior that arises from their cooperation at the lower lever. Despite the limited sensory ability, computational power, and communication…
In this paper we present control strategies for implementing reconfigurable planar microassmbly using multiple stress-engineered MEMS microrobots (MicroStressBots). A MicroStressBot is an electrostatic microrobot that consists of an…