2D Magnetic Manipulation of a Micro-Robot in Glycerin Using Six Pairs of Magnetic Coils

This paper demonstrates the control system of a single magnetic micro-robot driven by combined coils. The combined coils consist of three pairs of Helmholtz coils and three pairs of Maxwell coils. The rotating magnetic field, gradient magnetic field, and combined magnetic field model of the combined coils were analyzed. To make the output magnetic field quickly converge to the reference point without steady-state error, the discrete-time optimal controller was designed based on the auto disturbance rejection technology. We have designed a closed-loop controller based on a position servo. The control system includes the position control and direction control of the micro-robot. To address problems with slow sampling frequency in visual feedback and inability to feed real-time position back to the control system, a Kalman filter algorithm was used to predict the position of the micro-robot in two-dimensional space. Simulations and experiments were carried out based on the proposed structure of combined coils and control scheme. The experimental results demonstrated the uniformity and excellent dynamic performance of the generated magnetic field.