Micro-Robotics and the Study of Muscle: Special Problems in Control, System Identification and Modelling

Abstract

In order to study nature's micro-machine, the muscle cell, we have developed, MR-1, a special purpose micro-motion robot. MR-1 has two limbs which are able to grasp single living muscle cells at each end and perform mechanical and optical experiments on them. An interesting set of system identification, control and modelling problems arise in this work. Traditional approaches to controlling the micro-robot have failed to meet our requirements and in our muscle studies, linear time-invariant system identification methods have not yielded useful scientific insights. In this paper the background to these problems is given together with our attempts to provide solutions to them. In some cases our attempts have been fruitful in others we have only succeeded in defining the problem and so must await future work.