External Power-Driven Microrobotic Swarm: From Fundamental Understanding to Imaging-Guided Delivery

Abstract

Untethered micro/nanorobots have been widely investigated owing to their potential in performing various tasks in different environments. The significant progress in this emerging interdisciplinary field has benefited from the distinctive features of those tiny active agents, such as wireless actuation, navigation under feedback control, and targeted delivery of small-scale objects. In recent studies, collective behaviors of these tiny machines have received tremendous attention because swarming agents can enhance the delivery capability and adaptability in complex environments and the contrast of medical imaging, thus benefiting the imaging-guided navigation and delivery. In this review, we summarize the recent research efforts on investigating collective behaviors of external power-driven micro/nanorobots, including the fundamental understanding of swarm formation, navigation, and pattern transformation. The fundamental understanding of swarming tiny machines provides the foundation for targeted delivery. We also summarize the swarm localization using different imaging techniques, including the imaging-guided delivery in biological environments. By highlighting the critical steps from understanding the fundamental interactions during swarm control to swarm localization and imaging-guided delivery applications, we envision that the microrobotic swarm provides a promising tool for delivering agents in an active, controlled manner.

Keywords: collective behaviors; imaging-guided delivery; medical imaging; micro/nanorobotics; microrobot actuation; swarm control; swarm localization; targeted navigation.