17 accepted papers
Miniature robots hold great promise for performing micromanipulation tasks within hard-to-reach confined spaces. However, effectively maneuvering across complex and unstructured terrain, achieving adaptive morphogenesis, and developing adaptive multimodal locomotion strategies remain challenges for
Magnetic helical microrobots have been widely applicated in environmental remediation, sensing, targeted medical applications, and so on. However, for locomotion and manipulation in unstructured liquid environments, the capabilities of distinguished motions and on-demand parking/starting over a team
Magnetic helical microrobots have attracted considerable attraction in microscale targeted delivery due to their high propulsion efficiency and movement flexibility. However, for biomedical applications in unstructured and multibranched liquid environments, the capabilities of high swimming performa
Microfluidic printing provides a novel tool to facilitate the bulk assembly of cell-aligned microfibers for the fabrication of artificial skeletal muscle structure. However, due to the poor controllability for the deposition position of the microfiber, it is still difficult to realize the anisotropi
Fabricated cellular micro-scaffold that recapitulates natural extracellular matrix (ECM) has shown huge potential in the study of cell behaviors. However, the reproducing of the physiological morphology with high efficiency and accuracy in the micro-scaffold still remains as a major challenge. Here,
Many previous works have facilitated muscle cell (C2C12) alignment to form fiber-like cell structures. However, there still remains a challenge how to induce C2C12 myoblasts in the cell structures to differentiate into matured myocytes to form a functional muscle tissue, while external mechanical st…
Tissue engineering is trying to use modular tissue micro-rings to construct artificial biological microtubes as substitute of autologous tissue tubes to alleviate the shortage of donor sources. However, because of the lack of effective assembly strategies, it is still challenging to achieve high-spe…
The research on rare cells makes a significant contribution to biology research and medical treatment for the application of diagnostic operation as well as prognoses treatment. Therefore, sorting them from heterogeneous mixtures is crucial and valuable. Traditional cell sorting methods featured wit…
Microgrippers play a significant role in manipulation of micro-objects. To achieve dexterous and precise manipulation, a microgripper is required to be compactly designed and embedded with sensing feedback. Meanwhile, to convert the sensor position into displacement of the microgripper, the embedded…
In micromanipulation, lots of methods have been developed to manipulate objects in microscale. However, few of them can be applied in both the transportation and the rotation of the micro objects. In this paper, we present a novel method to realize the non-contact transportation and rotation of the…
Helical structure assembled by hydrogel microfibers is significant for culture of smooth muscle cells. However, the helical structure is only fabricated at the macroscale, while the fabrication of helical microstructure is still a challenge due to the lack of assembly method. In this paper, we propo…
It is of great importance to pick up a single carbon nanotube (CNT) from a bulk of CNTs for nanodevice fabrication. In this study, we have proposed a nanorobotic manipulation system allowing automated pick-up of CNTs based on visual feedback. We utilize histogram normalization for automatic binariza…
In vitro tissues are significant biological substitute for drug test, cell morphogenesis exploration and organ transplantation. In this letter, a novel microrobotic bioassembly method is proposed to engineer 3-D cellular structure, which can be utilized to culture in vitro tissue with microstructura
Vascular-like microtube takes an important role in delivering oxygen and nutrient to keep cell alive in the generated tissue. In this paper, we present an automated micromanipulation system to assemble 2-D gel micro-rings to vascular-like microtubes by means of generating and controlling microbubble
Alginate hydrogel microfibers are a promising cell-laden module for three-dimensional (3-D) assembly to build cellular structures. However, it is still a challenge to manipulate them for microassembly. In this letter, we report a novel magnetic control method to handle this challenge. To enhance the
Fabrication of artificial blood vessels in micro scale significantly benefits the regeneration of functional human vascular networks. In this paper, we develop an efficient multi-microrobotic system with an innovative motorized sample holder (MSH) and two manipulators. Air is injected into the solut…
Due to the poor controllability in hydrogels, Hydrogels-based assembly to form larger 3D complex shapes is still a big challenge. In this paper, we have reported a novel “bottom-up” method to fabricate three-dimensional (3D) magnetic alginate microfibers (MAMs) assemblies with complex shapes. Specif…