TY - JOUR
T1 - A Survey on Swarm Microrobotics
AU - Yang, Lidong
AU - Yu, Jiangfan
AU - Yang, Shihao
AU - Wang, Ben
AU - Nelson, Bradley J.
AU - Zhang, Li
N1 - Funding:
This work was supported in part by the Hong Kong RGC project JLFS/E-402/18, in part by the ITF project with project No. MRP/036/18X, in part by the Croucher Foundation Grant with Ref. No. CAS20403, in part by the CUHK internal grants, in part by the Multi-Scale Medical Robotics Center (MRC), InnoHK, at the Hong Kong Science Park, in part by the SIAT-CUHK Joint Laboratory of
Robotics, and Intelligent Systems, in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Shenzhen Science, and Technology Innovation Commission under Grant RCBS20200714114920190, in part by Guangdong Basic, and Applied Basic Research Foundation under Grant 2021A1515010672, in part by Natural Science Foundation of Shenzhen University under Grant 000002110712, in part by the
Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society under Grant AC01202101017 and Grant AC01202101018, and in part by start-up funding of CUHK-SZ under Grant UDF01001929.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 IEEE.
PY - 2022/6/1
Y1 - 2022/6/1
N2 - The small size and wireless actuation of microrobots make them potential candidates for minimally invasive medicine. To advance microrobots to future clinical application, microrobotics researchers have investigated a number of key issues, in which swarm control is a primary challenge and is attracting increasing attention. As a single microrobot has limited volume and surface area, clinically relevant tasks, including in-vivo tracking, usually require simultaneous control of a large swarm of microrobots. Unlike macroscale robots, implementing on-board actuators and sensors for microrobots is challenging, which differentiates swarm microrobotics from other swarm robotics approaches. This article systematically summarizes the state of the art for this emerging field, including actuation systems with different power sources, swarm behaviors modeling and simulation, swarm control strategies, and targeted biomedical applications. Actuation principles of microrobot swarms are categorized in detail, and critical comparisons are made to provide guidance and insight for future swarm microrobotics researchers. Considering the unique features of swarm microrobotics compared to traditional swarm robotics, this article also emphasizes the modeling, simulation, and control of microrobot swarms. Furthermore, recent biomedical applications of microrobot swarms are summarized to illustrate specific application scenarios. Finally, we provide an assessment of the future directions of swarm microrobotics.
AB - The small size and wireless actuation of microrobots make them potential candidates for minimally invasive medicine. To advance microrobots to future clinical application, microrobotics researchers have investigated a number of key issues, in which swarm control is a primary challenge and is attracting increasing attention. As a single microrobot has limited volume and surface area, clinically relevant tasks, including in-vivo tracking, usually require simultaneous control of a large swarm of microrobots. Unlike macroscale robots, implementing on-board actuators and sensors for microrobots is challenging, which differentiates swarm microrobotics from other swarm robotics approaches. This article systematically summarizes the state of the art for this emerging field, including actuation systems with different power sources, swarm behaviors modeling and simulation, swarm control strategies, and targeted biomedical applications. Actuation principles of microrobot swarms are categorized in detail, and critical comparisons are made to provide guidance and insight for future swarm microrobotics researchers. Considering the unique features of swarm microrobotics compared to traditional swarm robotics, this article also emphasizes the modeling, simulation, and control of microrobot swarms. Furthermore, recent biomedical applications of microrobot swarms are summarized to illustrate specific application scenarios. Finally, we provide an assessment of the future directions of swarm microrobotics.
KW - Assembly
KW - automation at micro-/nanoscale
KW - biomedical applications
KW - micro-/nanorobots
KW - swarm
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85119613868&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TRO.2021.3111788
DO - 10.1109/TRO.2021.3111788
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85119613868
SN - 1552-3098
VL - 38
SP - 1531
EP - 1551
JO - IEEE Transactions on Robotics
JF - IEEE Transactions on Robotics
IS - 3
ER -