Battery‐Less Soft Millirobot That Can Move, Sense, and Communicate Remotely by Coupling the Magnetic and Piezoelectric Effects

Abstract

The soft millirobot is a promising candidate for emerging applications in various in‐vivo/vitro biomedical settings. Despite recent success in its design and actuation, the absence of sensing ability makes it still far from being a reality. Here, a radio frequency identification (RFID) based battery‐less soft millirobot that can move, sense, and communicate remotely by coupling the magnetic and piezoelectric effects is reported. This design integrates the robot actuation and power generation units within a thin multilayer film (<0.5 mm), i.e., a lower magnetic composite limb decorated with multiple feet imparts locomotion and a flexible piezoceramic composite film recovers energy simultaneously. Under a trigger of external magnetic guidance, the millirobot can achieve remote locomotion, environment monitoring, and wireless communication with no requirement of any on‐board battery or external wired power supply. Furthermore, this robot demonstrates the sensing capability in measuring environment temperature and contact interface by two different sensing models, i.e., carried‐on and build‐in sensing mode, respectively. This research represents a remarkable advance in the emerging area of untethered soft robotics, benefiting a broad spectrum of promising applications, such as in‐body monitoring, diagnosis, and drug delivery.

Highly anisotropic and flexible piezoceramic kirigami for preventing joint disorders

“…Figure 2A illustrates the manufacturing process of the kirigami-structured piezoelectric network composite using the modified template-assisted sol-gel method, which is effective in manufacturing piezoelectric composite with interconnected piezoceramic phase ( 42 , 43 ). First, the prepared mixed PZT suspensions are dropped onto the stretched organic textile with honeycomb grids until the whole organic textile template is immersed by the mixed suspensions.…”

A Polymeric Bilayer Multi-Legged Soft Millirobot with Dual Actuation and Humidity Sensing

“…Carbon-based materials display obvious absorption of the solar broadband spectra [ 18 ], Here, acetylene black was employed to fabricate a photothermal actuation device that was principally constructed of two layers: an actuation layer made of AB/PDMS and an inert layer of Kapton film. The coefficient of the thermal expansion (CTE) and Young’s modulus of the AB/PDMS and Kapton layers were different [ 19 , 20 ], which determined the actuator properties under thermal-induced deformation. Attributed to the strong absorption of AB microparticles in the spectra of the NIR region [ 18 ], when NIR light was irradiated on the polymeric bilayer actuator, the actuator would experience a fast temperature elevation and then a controllable deformation process.…”

“…It is worth noting that being equipped with an effective sensing system rather than only actuation is an essential requirement for an impeccable robot system [ 20 , 28 ]. Although the sensor technique has quite matured, the limited size for integration and signal transfer still hampers millirobot applications in reality.…”

Progress on Self-Powered Wearable and Implantable Systems Driven by Nanogenerators

“…chest [78] knee [80,108]; foot [32,48,77] heart and pericardium [87,101,105] pacemaker lead [97,116] elbow [26,56] chest [29,50]; duodenum [120]; stomach [103] knee [26,30,56] neck [18,19,29,50,52] tumor cells [94] lung [86] waist [21,25,27,45,55,74,81] elbow [49,72,76] the surface of bone [99] heart [83,84,86,106,110,114] eye [23,28] wrist [18,29,50] the subdermal dorsal region [93] blood vessel…”