TrinityMag:A novel magnetically actuated miniature robot manipulating system with a human-scale workspace

The development of the magnetic manipulating system is essential for applications of magnetically actuated miniature robots in biomedical practice,such as targeted therapy and precise surgery.However,the workspaces of existing magnetic manipulating systems for miniature robots are mostly insufficient to manipulate miniature robots inside human bodies.The present study proposes an innovative electromagnets-based manipulating system,TrinityMag,which can produce dynamic three-dimensional(3D)magnetic fields in a human-scale spherical workspace with a 2.6 m diameter.The magnetic field of a single electromagnet is simulated,and a new calibration technic is designed based on deep learning networks.Then,the arrangement of three electromagnets is optimized to produce maximal 3D arbitrary magnetic fields with limited currents.Moreover,a target-tracking algorithm is developed so that the TrinityMag can track the miniature robot in real time.Finally,the TrinityMag is validated in experiments to manipulate a soft millirobot to move in human-scale tortuous tracks with two types of locomotions.The maximum speed of the soft millirobot reaches 11.05 body length/s.Our work contributes to a significant increment in the workspace of the electromagnets-based manipulating system for miniature robots.We further expect that the TrinityMag could push the applications of miniature robots from laboratory to clinical practice.