Design of a Magnetically-Driven Untethered Micro-Gripper for Drug Delivery

Abstract

Micro-grippers have great potential to be used in robot-assisted surgery. They can go through small vessels and natural orifice, which makes them a good choice for drug delivery or treatment. Magnetic field can exert forces and torques that cross non-metallic substances and has no harm to organism. As a result, magnetically-driven micro-gripper can be a good candidate for clinical practice. In order to apply these advantages to drug delivery, a magnetically-driven controllable untethered micro-gripper is designed. Two small permanent magnets are assembled together with a certain angle to response the magnetic fields. Based on the principle that the magnetic fields exert torques and forces, we set up a control model of the micro-gripper. In opening and closing experiment, the current version of micro-gripper can open about 20° in a 18mT magnetic fields generated by 11A current in our coil system. Moreover, we achieve the move control of the micro-gripper. The orientation and movement can be controlled by controlling of the external magnetic field. In the movement experiment and the drug delivery experiment, the micro-gripper has shown a good performance. This study give a new research on micro-gripper used to drug delivery.