Vision-based magnetic platform for actuator positioning and wireless control of microrobots

This work presents a method to guide microrobots by positioning a magnetic actuator using hybrid vision system. The used actuator mounted at a robot end-effector creates local maxima of the magnetic field magnitude, which results in an attractive point for microrobots in its influence zone. The hybrid vision system serves to control the actuator position through the robotic platform to make the trapped microrobot undergo a planned trajectory. In first validation results, the particle driving is achieved in open loop with no adjustment with respect to the planned trajectory. Such scheme can be used in the case where the microrobot position can not be measured in real time. The second validation results deal with the case of microrobot positioning by visual servoing. This can be used in the case where recovering microrobot position is possible, for example in eye treatment.