Researchers at the University of Twente's Surgical Robotics Laboratory have succeeded in getting two micro-robots to pick up, move and assemble passive objects together in a 3D environment. Among other things, this could open up new possibilities for biomedical applications.
In some operations, a surgeon can hardly reach the part to be operated, if at all. Microrobots can offer a solution. These robots can be smaller than a grain of salt, thus easily finding their way through the human body. Thanks to the invention by researchers at the Surgical Robotics Laboratory, it is possible to have two of these microrobots work together.
Moving and stacking cubes
The researchers had two one-millimetre-sized microrobots perform different actions. These included allowing the robots to pick up small cubes, move them or stack the cubes on top of each other. The robots did this in a 3D environment, in which both could move up, down and to the left, right, front and back.
The microrobots are magnetic. This brings challenges. Like ordinary magnets, the microrobots stick together if they get too close to each other. Researchers at the Surgical Robotics Laboratory used this property to their advantage. They used a custom-made controller that allowed the team to move the individual robots and control how they reacted to each other.
Biocompatible
The robots in question are biocompatible. In practice, this means that they do not cause any harmful reactions in the human body. In addition, they are controllable even in hard-to-reach and even confined spaces. "We can manipulate biomedical samples remotely without contaminating them. This can improve existing procedures and open the door to new ones," says Piñan Basualdo, postdoctoral researcher at the Surgical Robotics Laboratory.
The project is part of the European RĔGO project, which is part of the Horizon Europe programme. The RĔGO project aims to develop an innovative set of AI-controlled, micro-sized, untethered, stimuli-responsive swarms of robots.
The researchers have published their findings in an article in the scientific journal *Advanced Intelligent Systems*.
Author: Wouter Hoeffnagel
Photo: fernando zhiminaicela via Pixabay
