Wireless remote control for an electromagnet-type moving microrobot (fabrication of prototype microrobot and experimental results)

Abstract

In recent years, a large number of studies have focused on micro-robots. Moreover, yearly contests have been held in order to develop micro-robot technologies. As a result of these activities, various types of microrobot have been proposed, including motor-type, piezoelectric-element-type, and electromagnet-type micro-robots. To date, the authors' research group has been studying a locomotion mechanism and control method for an electromagnet-type microrobot, which has a volume of 1[cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> ]. The proposed microrobot has a feature of being able to turn with single electromagnet coil using the difference of the vibration characteristics of the legs. In this paper, we propose a wireless remote control method for the microrobot, using the feature of the locomotion mechanism and control method. We report on some experimental results to confirm the fundamental function of the wireless remote control method proposed.