Various types of actuation methods for microrobots have been proposed. Among the actuation methods, electromagnetic based actuation (EMA) has been considered a promising actuation mechanism. In this ...paper, a new EMA system for three-dimensional (3D) locomotion and drilling of the microrobot is proposed. The proposed system consists of four fixed coil pairs and one rotating coil pair. In detail, the coil system has three pairs of stationary Helmholtz coil, a pair of stationary Maxwell coil and a pair of rotating Maxwell coil. The Helmholtz coil pairs can magnetize and align the microrobot to the desired direction and the two pairs of Maxwell coil can generate the propulsion force of the microrobot. In addition, the Helmholtz coil pairs can rotate the microrobot about a desired axis. The rotation of the microrobot is a drilling action through an occlusion in a vessel. Through various experiments, the 3D locomotion and drilling of the microrobot by using the proposed EMA system are demonstrated. Compared with other EMA systems, the proposed system can provide the advantages of consecutive locomotion and drilling of the microrobot.
Various types of actuation methods for intravascular locomotive microrobot have been proposed and demonstrated. Among the actuation methods, electromagnetic based actuation (EMA) was considered as a ...promising mechanism. In generally, planar EMA systems for 2 dimensional movement of the microrobot were proposed and demonstrated. In this paper, we present 3 dimensional (D) EMA systems for the 3D space locomotion of the microrobot. The proposed system consists of a coil system and a robotic actuation system. The coil system has a pair of Helmholtz coils and a pair of Maxwell coils, and the robotic actuation system has a serial robot structure with roll-pitch-roll rotational axes which can rotate about three orthogonal axes (X, Y and Z). Finally, through experiments, we can demonstrate 3D movement of the microrobot by using the proposed EMA system. The proposed EMA system can be utilized for the 3D actuation of the intravascular microrobot.
