Dynamical electromagnetic actuation system for microscale manipulation

Electromagnetic actuation systems (EMA) have excelled themselves in microscale manipulation. Yet, the fastened structure of the current systems tethers the controlled workspace. In this paper, a new electromagnetic actuation principle is investigated. The actuator structure consists of a pair of coaxially movable electromagnets integrated to a robotic manipulator. The pair induces a coaxial homogeneous magnetic field or gradient to control the magnitude of the magnetic torque or force by changing the distance between the electromagnets asymmetrically. The robotic manipulator, on the other hand, transports the pair at five degrees of freedom to manipulate a microrobot in 3D space by closed-loop control with integrated vision feedback system. Numerical analyses are performed to investigate the induced electromagnetic field at the symmetrical/asymmetrical configuration of the coaxial pair. Accordingly, a correlation between the magnitude of the magnetic force and the asymmetric distance is obtained for flexible force control. A proof of concept prototype is constructed to validate the proposed actuation principle and evaluate its performance experimentally. The experimental results verify the numerical analysis and show the system applicability of inducing controlled forces on a micro-object in 2D and 3D workspaces at a velocity range of 65 to 157 $\mu$ m/s. Moreover, micromanipulation on a helical route is also demonstrated with an absolute error mean from the reference path of 191 $\mu$ m.