Biomimetic swimming mini-robots using electro-magnetic actuation (EMA) system

For the actuation of mini-robots, electromagnetic based actuation (EMA) methods were proposed. EMA system has many advantages for the wireless actuation of mini-robots. This paper introduces our proposed biomimetic swimming mini-robots such as tadpole robot and jellyfish robot. The biomimetic swimming mini-robots could be driven by an external alternating magnet field using three pairs of Helmholtz coils. The swimming mini-robots consist of a buoyant robot body, permanent magnets, and fins. Especially, the tadpole mini-robot has a single fin which is directly linked to the permanent magnet and the jellyfish mini-robot has multiple fins which have a permanent magnet at the end of fin. The external alternating magnetic field from three pairs of Helmholtz coils could generate the propulsion and steering force of the tadpole mini-robot and the jellyfish mini-robot in 2- and 3-dimensional (-D) space. Firstly, we demonstrated the fabrications of the EMA coil system and the mini-robots. Secondly, we summarized the locomotive algorithms of the mini-robots using EMA. Thirdly, we setup the control system for the EMA driven mini-robots, which consists of EMA coils, dual cameras, controller, power amplifier, and conventional joystick. Through various experiments, we evaluated the locomotion algorithms the swimming mini-robots using EMA system. Finally, we demonstrated the performances of the swimming mini-robots in 2-D and 3-D space.