Steering Micro-Robotic Swarm by Dynamic Actuating Fields

Conference Paper (2016)
Author(s)

Q. Chao

J Yu

C. Dai

T Xu

L Zhang

Charlie Wang (TU Delft - Materials and Manufacturing)

X. Jin

Research Group
Materials and Manufacturing
Copyright
© 2016 Q. Chao, J Yu, C. Dai, T Xu, L. Zhang, C.C. Wang, X. Jin
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA.2016.7487731
More Info
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Publication Year
2016
Language
English
Copyright
© 2016 Q. Chao, J Yu, C. Dai, T Xu, L. Zhang, C.C. Wang, X. Jin
Research Group
Materials and Manufacturing
Pages (from-to)
5230-5235
ISBN (print)
978-1-4673-8025-6
ISBN (electronic)
978-1-4673-8026-3
Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Abstract

We present a general solution for steering microrobotic
swarm by dynamic actuating fields. In our approach, the
motion of micro-robots is controlled by changing the actuating
direction of a field applied to them. The time-series sequence
of actuating field’s directions can be computed automatically.
Given a target position in the domain of swarm, a governing
field is first constructed to provide optimal moving directions at
every points. Following these directions, a robot can be driven
to the target efficiently. However, when working with a crowd of
micro-robots, the optimal moving directions on different agents
can contradict with each other. To overcome this difficulty, we
develop a novel steering algorithm to compute a statistically
optimal actuating direction at each time frame. Following a
sequence of these actuating directions, a crowd of micro-robots
can be transported to the target region effectively. Our steering
strategy of swarm has been verified on a platform that generates
magnetic fields with unique actuating directions. Experimental
tests taken on aggregated magnetic micro-particles are quite
encouraging.

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