On-board tools for mobile miniature robots

Abstract

Untethered miniature robots are attracting increasing attention because of their ability to access small and complex regions of the human body to perform a wide range of tasks. This gives them the potential to revolutionize healthcare by allowing medical procedures to be performed less invasively or even enabling new surgical procedures. Compared to open surgeries, minimally invasive surgeries are highly beneficial to patients because they are associated with reduced recovery time, less pain, and lower risk of complications. For miniature robots to be used in such biomedical procedures, it would be advantageous for the robots to possess multiple functionalities, since surgical procedures usually require multiple tools. Here, we present the design of a multifunctional millimeter-scale soft robot actuated by remote magnetic fields. The robot is designed to perform several tasks, including cutting, gripping, storing removed material, drug dispensing, remote heating, and locomotion. Scaled-up prototypes of the robot were fabricated, and preliminary experiments were conducted on the prototypes to assess the feasibility of the design. From the experimental results, we conclude that the design is feasible, but would require tuning of certain dimensions for effective actuation of all functions. Subsequently, calculations were performed to determine suitable dimensions for the actual robot.