Adaptive locomotion of artificial microswimmers

Huang, Hen-Wei; Uslu, Fazil; Katsamba, Panayiota; Chao, Qianwen; Lauga, Eric; Sakar, Mahmut Selman; Nelson, Bradley J.

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aau1532

Cited by 220 publications

(234 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Recently, various programmed robots have been further developed by patterning magnetic particles in responsive polymer composites. These robots possess excellent programmable 3D swimming capabilities but no adaptive functions . These soft materials may have paved important ways for controllable motions, but compared with the smart adaptations in nature, the overall robotic systems still suffer from insufficiency of intelligence.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconfiguration, Camouflage, and Color‐Shifting for Bioinspired Adaptive Hydrogel‐Based Millirobots

Cui

et al. 2020

Adv Funct Materials

169

158

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Nature provides much inspiration for developing soft millirobots. However, compared with smart and adaptations of lives in nature, these robotic systems still suffer from insufficiency of intelligence. Here, a new untethered soft millirobot with magnetic actuation in the head and function in the tail is presented via implementing control, actuation, and sensing directly in the materials, thereby endowing robots with multimodal locomotion and environment‐adaptive functions. Due to the soft and asymmetric structure, the millirobot not only shows robust multimodal locomotion, including controllable and transformable crawling, swinging and rolling, but also achieves an excellent capability of helical propulsion in water. Moreover, the robot also possesses outstanding obstacle‐crossing abilities, including helically propelling over obstacles (>2 body length), crawling within a 2 mm height tunnel and swinging through a 450 µm width channel. Furthermore, the robot can even squeeze its body to crawl through a tube easily via near‐infrared irradiation, which triggers the osmotic shrinking of its body. Notably, the robots also possess extraordinary environment‐adaptive functions, for example, leptocephali‐like optical camouflage in water, octopus‐like controllable delivery and variable appearance via visible color–shifting for interaction with the changing environment. These smart robotic systems would be of benefit in various fields via seamless integration of bioinspired design and smart materials.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconfiguration, Camouflage, and Color‐Shifting for Bioinspired Adaptive Hydrogel‐Based Millirobots

Cui

et al. 2020

Adv Funct Materials

169

158

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“…Fig. 3 provides examples for a representative class of 3D ribbon geometries, i.e., helical mesostructures that can be utilized in various applications as extremely stretchable interconnects (1,56), tunable inductors (22), and flexible microswimmers with high motility (57). Here, a serpentine ribbon structure (Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harnessing the interface mechanics of hard films and soft substrates for 3D assembly by controlled buckling

Liu

Wang

Xu³

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Techniques for forming sophisticated, 3D mesostructures in advanced, functional materials are of rapidly growing interest, owing to their potential uses across a broad range of fundamental and applied areas of application. Recently developed approaches to 3D assembly that rely on controlled buckling mechanics serve as versatile routes to 3D mesostructures in a diverse range of high-quality materials and length scales of relevance for 3D microsystems with unusual function and/or enhanced performance. Nonlinear buckling and delamination behaviors in materials that combine both weak and strong interfaces are foundational to the assembly process, but they can be difficult to control, especially for complex geometries. This paper presents theoretical and experimental studies of the fundamental aspects of adhesion and delamination in this context. By quantifying the effects of various essential parameters on these processes, we establish general design diagrams for different material systems, taking into account 4 dominant delamination states (wrinkling, partial delamination of the weak interface, full delamination of the weak interface, and partial delamination of the strong interface). These diagrams provide guidelines for the selection of engineering parameters that avoid interface-related failure, as demonstrated by a series of examples in 3D helical mesostructures and mesostructures that are reconfigurable based on the control of loading-path trajectories. Three-dimensional micromechanical resonators with frequencies that can be selected between 2 distinct values serve as demonstrative examples.

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“…[3,13] In contrast, artificial flexible swimmers, consisting of magnetic particles linked by DNA, [8] DNA assemblies, [48] nanowires, [35,36] typically deform only passively, [35,36,48] or have a small number of passive degrees of freedom (DOFs). [8] More recent developments on soft active materials, which deform in response to external stimuli such as light, [49][50][51][52][53] heat, [54][55][56][57][58][59] and magnetic field, [60,61] offer a class of shape-programmable materials to achieve mechanical functionalities beyond those of traditional soft materials. We highlight recent applications of these novel materials in the following paragraphs in realizing adaptive locomotion at small scales.…”

Section: Exploiting Soft Active Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Roads to Smart Artificial Microswimmers

Tsang

Demir

Ding

et al. 2020

Advanced Intelligent Systems

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Artificial microswimmers offer exciting opportunities for biomedical applications. The goal of these synthetics is to swim like natural micro‐organisms through biological environments and perform complex tasks such as drug delivery and microsurgery. Extensive efforts in the past several decades have focused on generating propulsion at the microscopic scale, which has engendered a variety of artificial microswimmers based on different physical and physicochemical mechanisms. Yet, these major advancements represent only the initial steps toward successful biomedical applications of microswimmers in realistic scenarios. A next step is to design “smart” microswimmers that can adapt their locomotion behaviors in response to environmental factors. Herein, recent progress in the development of microswimmers with intelligent behaviors is surveyed in three major areas: 1) adaptive locomotion across different media, 2) tactic behaviors in response to environment stimuli, and 3) multifunctional swimmers that can perform complex tasks. The emerging technologies and novel approaches used in developing these “smart” microswimmers, which enable them to display behaviors similar to biological cells, are discussed.

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Adaptive locomotion of artificial microswimmers

Abstract: Artificial microswimmers display adaptive locomotion by autonomously morphing in response to physical changes in the environment.

Cited by 220 publications

References 47 publications

Reconfiguration, Camouflage, and Color‐Shifting for Bioinspired Adaptive Hydrogel‐Based Millirobots

Reconfiguration, Camouflage, and Color‐Shifting for Bioinspired Adaptive Hydrogel‐Based Millirobots

Harnessing the interface mechanics of hard films and soft substrates for 3D assembly by controlled buckling

Roads to Smart Artificial Microswimmers

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