An On-Wall-Rotating Strategy for Effective Upstream Motion of Untethered Millirobot: Principle, Design, and Demonstration

Untethered miniature robots that can access narrow and harsh environments in the body show great potential for future biomedical applications. Despite the many types of millirobot that have been developed, swimming against the fast blood flow remains a big challenge due to lack of the ability to stay still and the large fluidic resistance from blood. This article proposes an on-wall-rotating strategy and a streamlined millirobot to achieve effective upstream motion in the lumen. First, the principle of on-wall-rotating strategy and the dynamic motion model of the millirobot is established. Then, a critical safety angle Θ_s is theoretically and experimentally analyzed for the safe and stable control of the robot. After that, a series of experiments are conducted to verify the proposed driving strategy. The results suggest that the robot is able to move at a speed of 5 mm/s against flow velocity of 138 mm/s, which is comparable to the blood flow of 2700 mm³/s and several times faster than other reported driving strategies. This work offers a new strategy for the untethered magnetic robot construction and control for blood vessels, which would promote the application of millirobot for biomedical engineering. © 2023 IEEE.