Microscale Tumbling Magnetic (µTUM) Microrobots for Biomedical Applications

Recent advances in the design and fabrication of microrobots has made them increasingly viable for biomedical applications. Due to their small size, microrobots have the potential to access many areas of the body with minimally invasive strategies. They can be wirelessly controlled and steered toward target locations within the body to perform a myriad of tasks. Compared to conventional surgical and drug administration techniques, the use of actively guided microrobots have promise to reduce patient trauma, lower the risk of side effects, and have higher drug retention rates.  In this project, we are investigating microscale tumbling magnetic microrobots for various biomedical environments.   We use a novel two-degree-of-freedom rotating permanent magnet system as the source of the time-varying external magnetic field for wireless control and propulsion and with high-frequency ultrasound imaging for in vivo applications.