Magnetically Actuated Fiber-Based Soft Robots

Youngbin Lee; Florian Koehler; Tom Dillon; Gabriel Loke; Yoonho Kim; Juliette Marion; Marc-Joseph Antonini; Indie C Garwood; Atharva Sahasrabudhe; Keisuke Nagao; Xuanhe Zhao; Yoel Fink; Ellen T Roche; Polina Anikeeva

doi:10.1002/adma.202301916

Magnetically Actuated Fiber-Based Soft Robots

Adv Mater. 2023 Sep;35(38):e2301916. doi: 10.1002/adma.202301916. Epub 2023 Jul 23.

Authors

Youngbin Lee^{1

2}, Florian Koehler^{2

3}, Tom Dillon⁴, Gabriel Loke^{1

2}, Yoonho Kim⁴, Juliette Marion^{1

2}, Marc-Joseph Antonini², Indie C Garwood⁵, Atharva Sahasrabudhe^{2

6

7}, Keisuke Nagao^{1

2}, Xuanhe Zhao^{4

8}, Yoel Fink^{1

2

9}, Ellen T Roche^{4

10}, Polina Anikeeva^{1

2

6

11}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
² Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
³ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
⁴ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
⁵ Harvard/MIT Health Science & Technology Graduate Program, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
⁶ McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
⁷ Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
⁸ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
⁹ Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
¹⁰ Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
¹¹ Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.

Abstract

Broad adoption of magnetic soft robotics is hampered by the sophisticated field paradigms for their manipulation and the complexities in controlling multiple devices. Furthermore, high-throughput fabrication of such devices across spatial scales remains challenging. Here, advances in fiber-based actuators and magnetic elastomer composites are leveraged to create 3D magnetic soft robots controlled by unidirectional fields. Thermally drawn elastomeric fibers are instrumented with a magnetic composite synthesized to withstand strains exceeding 600%. A combination of strain and magnetization engineering in these fibers enables programming of 3D robots capable of crawling or walking in magnetic fields orthogonal to the plane of motion. Magnetic robots act as cargo carriers, and multiple robots can be controlled simultaneously and in opposing directions using a single stationary electromagnet. The scalable approach to fabrication and control of magnetic soft robots invites their future applications in constrained environments where complex fields cannot be readily deployed.

Keywords: fibers; magnetic actuation; magnetic composites; soft robots; thermal drawing.

Abstract

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