A crawling and drilling microrobot driven by an external oscillating or precessional magnetic field in tubular environments

Abstract

We propose a crawling and drilling microrobot actuated by an external precessional magnetic field (EPMF) to effectively unclog obstructed blood vessels. Conventional crawling microrobots can only generate crawling motions using an external oscillating magnetic field. The proposed microrobot can generate navigating (crawling) and drilling motions selectively or simultaneously by controlling the EPMFs. We prototyped the proposed microrobot, and conducted several experiments to verify the efficacy of the crawling and drilling ability of the microrobot in a tubular environment.