A Micro-Scale Magnetic Tumbling Microrobot

This paper presents a magnetic tumbling microrobot design at the micro-scale. The microrobot has a dumbbell shape whose largest dimension is about 400 μm. When subjected to an exterior predefined magnetic field, the magnetic microagent performs a tumbling motion driven by the interacting magnetic forces and momentums. The magnetic field providing driven force is generated by a coil system consisting of five electromagnetic coils. Under the available driven field, we show that the prototype agent is able to tumble on various types of surfaces in both dry and fluid environments.