Like Jedi Knights, researchers at Purdue University are using the force — force fields, that is. The team of scientists has discovered a way to control tiny robots with the help of individual magnetic fields, which, in turn, might help us one day learn how to control entire groups of microbots and nanobots in areas like medicine or even manufacturing.
While the idea of controlling microbots might be simple, it's a deceptively complicated goal, especially if the bots in question are conceivably too small to realistically accommodate a tiny enough battery to power them. This is where the magnetic force fields come into play: they can generate enough energy and charge to move the microbots about — "like using mini force fields."
To conduct their experiment, the researchers arranged minuscule planar coils in a grid formation to create the magnetic fields they would use. After that, they took their microbots — in this case, disc-shaped magnets only twice the size of a pinhead — and manipulated them using the "attractive or repulsive forces" enacted, depending on which magnetic pole was used.
So, why the tiny bots in the first place? The advent of nanotechnology could be huge in the field of medicine: for instance, instead of invasive surgery on a cancer patient, nanobots would be able to navigate the human body, locate the tumor and perform a minuscule biopsy so that scientists could determine whether a mass is malignant or benign.
"The reason we want independent movement of each robot is so they can do cooperative manipulation tasks," David Cappelleri, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, in an official statement posted to the Purdue blog. "Think of ants. They can independently move, yet all work together to perform tasks such as lifting and moving things. We want to be able to control them individually so we can have some robots here doing one thing, and some robots there doing something else at the same time."
Even though the microbots that were tested were pretty tiny, the researchers are still aiming to downsize: their envisioned end product will be a bot only 250 microns in size.
Check out the force field-controlled microbots in the video clip below.
Source: Purdue University
Photo: Windell Oskay | Flickr
