Path planning and aggregation for a microrobot swarm in vascular networks using a global input
Li Huang, Louis Rogowski, Min Jun Kim, Aaron T. Becker
Abstract
Microrobots have great potential for microassembly and non-invasive surgery applications. Motivated by studies proposing MRI-guided drug delivery to tumor cells using magnetic micro carriers, this paper studies two major challenges of this problem: (i) microrobot swarm trajectory generation, and (ii) swarm aggregation using a global input. We propose an augmented RRT for trajectory generation to reduce environment interference, and a divide-and-conquer algorithm for swarm aggregation to improve performance. Simulations demonstrate the utility of these approaches in comparison to alternate heuristics. Our trajectory generation and aggregation strategies are implemented on a swarm of ferromagnetic microparticles in oil using a 6-coil electromagnetic system with image feedback.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{iros2017_pathplanninganda,
title = {Path planning and aggregation for a microrobot swarm in vascular networks using a global input},
author = {Li Huang and Louis Rogowski and Min Jun Kim and Aaron T. Becker},
booktitle = {IROS 2017},
year = {2017}
}