TY - JOUR
T1 - MILiMAC
T2 - Flexible Catheter with Miniaturized Electromagnets as a Small-Footprint System for Microrobotic Tasks
AU - Sikorski, Jakub
AU - Mohanty, Sumit
AU - Misra, Sarthak
PY - 2020/10
Y1 - 2020/10
N2 - Advancements in medical microrobotics have given rise to an abundance of agents capable of localised interaction with human body in small scales. Nevertheless, clinically-relevant applications of this technology are still limited by the auxiliary infrastructure required for actuation of micro-agents. In this letter, we approach this challenge. Using finite-element analysis, we show that miniaturization of electromagnets can be used to create systems capable of providing magnetic forces adequate for micro-agent steering, while retaining small footprint and power consumption. We use these observations to create MILiMAC (Microrobotic Infrastructure Loaded into Magnetically-Actuated Catheter). MILiMAC is a flexible catheter employing three miniaturized electromagnets to provide localized magnetic actuation at the deeply-seated microsurgery site. We test our approach in a proof-of-concept study deploying MILiMAC inside a test platform to deliver and steer a 600 [\boldsymbol{\mu }m] ferromagnetic microbead. The bead is steered along a set of user-defined trajectories using closed-loop position control. Across all trajectories the best performance metrics are the mean error of 0.41 [mm] and the steady-state error of 0.27 [mm].
AB - Advancements in medical microrobotics have given rise to an abundance of agents capable of localised interaction with human body in small scales. Nevertheless, clinically-relevant applications of this technology are still limited by the auxiliary infrastructure required for actuation of micro-agents. In this letter, we approach this challenge. Using finite-element analysis, we show that miniaturization of electromagnets can be used to create systems capable of providing magnetic forces adequate for micro-agent steering, while retaining small footprint and power consumption. We use these observations to create MILiMAC (Microrobotic Infrastructure Loaded into Magnetically-Actuated Catheter). MILiMAC is a flexible catheter employing three miniaturized electromagnets to provide localized magnetic actuation at the deeply-seated microsurgery site. We test our approach in a proof-of-concept study deploying MILiMAC inside a test platform to deliver and steer a 600 [\boldsymbol{\mu }m] ferromagnetic microbead. The bead is steered along a set of user-defined trajectories using closed-loop position control. Across all trajectories the best performance metrics are the mean error of 0.41 [mm] and the steady-state error of 0.27 [mm].
KW - Medical robots and systems
KW - micro/nano robots
KW - 22/2 OA procedure
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85088697511&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/LRA.2020.3004323
DO - 10.1109/LRA.2020.3004323
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85088697511
VL - 5
SP - 5260
EP - 5267
JO - IEEE Robotics and automation letters
JF - IEEE Robotics and automation letters
SN - 2377-3766
IS - 4
M1 - 9123530
ER -