Controllable magnetic field with any desired direction and strength is one of feasible sources to remotely power small scale robots. In particular, insides of lives where is unstructured, complex and uneven needs the reliable magnetic actuation systems. Details01, Details02. 

Motion patterns in macro scale (e.g. fish-like swimming, multi-legs walking) are useless in biological environments (e.g. blood, saliva). Mimicking swimming patterns of microorganism (e.g. bacteria, sperm) is a solution to deal with such the problem. For ex., Helical propulsion makes microrobots rotating about its long axis for forward/ backward motion effectively, even in low Re fluid. Details

Due to effective propulsion in low Re medium, path planning and following of Helical micro-swimmer is one of techniques to enhance locomotion capability.  The formulated path planning algorithm and the closed-loop controller is charge of steering the swimmers on a 3D reference-shortest path based on an online updating model trained by neural networks. Submillimeter accuracy approves feasibility and application in unstructured environments. Details

Robots of the future will not resemble the bulky rigid machines found nowadays, but will be compliant and adaptable, and able to safely interact with humans. So then, swimming soft robots benefits non-invasive interaction with tissues during performing biomedical tasks inside our body.  Details.

As mentioned, soft robots are compliant to environment with soft interaction and no harm. In order to navigate them, based on machine vision, control algorithm integrated path planning and following enables effective swimming to any desired position, including avoiding obstacles. Details.

An individual controllable robot can perform tasks effectively, but millions of them controlled once as called a swarm contribute the greater, and more powerful. Reconfiguring and on-demand control are a technique to enhance capability of a swarm of nanorobots (e.g. force, torque). 

Let imagine how aggressive millions of controllable robots armed with drug exert physical force empowered with chemical lysis. This activity is very powerful since dealing with unwanted and hard-to-reach biological objects (e.g. thrombus).  Details.

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ME Research Seminar, "Small-Scale Robotics"