Initial Design of a Bacterial Actuated Microrobot for Operations in an Aqueous Medium

Author

Andre, Walder ; Martel, Sylvain

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Eng., Ecole Polytech. de Montreal, Que.

fYear

2006

fDate

Aug. 30 2006-Sept. 3 2006

Firstpage

2824

Lastpage

2827

Abstract

The initial design of a 500 mumtimes200 mum untethered microrobot for future operations in an aqueous medium is briefly described. Electrical energy requirement is minimized by exploiting the motility of magnetotactic bacteria embedded in special reservoirs and used to propel the microrobot. An embedded control microcircuit powered through photovoltaic cells is developed to control the swimming directions of the bacteria and hence, the direction of the robot. The work presented is an initial step towards the development of platforms capable of relatively complex tasks being executed by a swarm of such microrobots pre-programmed with various behaviors

Keywords

bioMEMS; biocontrol; biological techniques; cell motility; microorganisms; microrobots; photovoltaic cells; 200 micron; 500 micron; aqueous medium; bacteria swimming direction control; bacterial actuated microrobot design; electrical energy requirements; embedded control; magnetotactic bacteria motility; photovoltaic cells; robot direction control; untethered microrobot; Biomedical engineering; Circuits; Cities and towns; Conductors; Energy consumption; Fabrication; Microorganisms; Photovoltaic cells; Robots; USA Councils; Microrobot; magnetotactic bacteria; micromanipulation; photovoltaic cell;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2006. EMBS '06. 28th Annual International Conference of the IEEE

Conference_Location

New York, NY

ISSN

1557-170X

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0032-5

Electronic_ISBN

1557-170X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IEMBS.2006.260718

Filename

4462383