Miniaturization of robots can radically change multiple areas of human activity, such as healthcare, where microrobots were proposed for various applications including cell/drug delivery or microsurgery. Pivotal to the development of such robots is exploring of untethered locomotion mechanisms that are efficient on the microscale. In our projects we are developing hydrogel microrobots lovcomoting through swimming or crawling, harvesting electromagnetic radiation from their surrounding for their propulson. The robots are taylored for specific tasks, for example as micromanipulators.
Figure: Hydrogel Microcrawler driven by focused laser
Rehor, I.; Maslen, C.; Moerman, P. G.; van Ravensteijn, B. G. P.; van Alst, R.; Groenewold, J.; Eral, H. B.; Kegel, W. K. Photoresponsive Hydrogel Microcrawlers Exploit Friction Hysteresis to Crawl by Reciprocal Actuation. Soft Robot. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1089/soro.2019.0169.