Three-dimensional electromagnetic actuation system for intravascular locomotion

Various types of actuation methods for intravascular locomotive microrobot have been proposed and demonstrated. Among the actuation methods, electromagnetic based actuation (EMA) was considered as a promising mechanism. In generally, planar EMA systems for 2 dimensional movement of the microrobot were proposed and demonstrated. In this paper, we present 3 dimensional (D) EMA systems for the 3D space locomotion of the microrobot. The proposed system consists of a coil system and a robotic actuation system. The coil system has a pair of Helmholtz coils and a pair of Maxwell coils, and the robotic actuation system has a serial robot structure with roll-pitch-roll rotational axes which can rotate about three orthogonal axes (X, Y and Z). Finally, through experiments, we can demonstrate 3D movement of the microrobot by using the proposed EMA system. The proposed EMA system can be utilized for the 3D actuation of the intravascular microrobot.