Automated Magnetic Microrobot Control: From Mathematical Modeling to Machine Learning

Microscale robotics has emerged as a transformative field, offering unparalleled opportunities for innovation and advancement in various fields. Owing to the distinctive benefits of wireless operation and a heightened level of safety, magnetic actuation has emerged as a widely adopted technique in the field of microrobotics. However, factors such as Brownian motion, fluid dynamic flows, and various nonlinear forces introduce uncertainties in the motion of micro/nanoscale robots, making it challenging to achieve precise navigational control in complex environments. This paper presents an extensive review encompassing the trajectory from theoretical foundations of the generation and modeling of magnetic fields as well as magnetic field-actuation modeling to motion control methods of magnetic microrobots. We introduce traditional control methods and the learning-based control approaches for robotic systems at the micro/nanoscale, and then these methods are compared. Unlike the conventional navigation methods based on precise mathematical models, the learning-based control and navigation approaches can directly learn control signals for the actuation systems from data and without relying on precise models. This endows the micro/nanorobots with high adaptability to dynamic and complex environments whose models are difficult/impossible to obtain. We hope that this review can provide insights and guidance for researchers interested in automated magnetic microrobot control. © 2024 by the authors.