Abstract
Swarming robotic systems, which stem from insect swarms in nature, exhibit a high level of environmental adaptability and enhanced tasking capabilities for targeted delivery and micromanipulation. Here, we present a strategy that reconfigures paramagnetic nanoparticles into microswarms energized by a sawtooth magnetic field. A rotary-stepping magnetic-chain mechanism is proposed to address the forming principle of disk-like swarms. Based on programming the sawtooth field, the microswarm can perform reversible transformations between a disk, an ellipse and a ribbon, as well as splitting and merging. In addition, the swarms can be steered in any direction with excellent maneuverability and a high level of pattern stability. Under accurate manipulation of a magnetic microswarm, multiple microparts with complicated shapes were successfully combined into a complete assembly. This reconfigurable swarming microrobot may shed light on the understanding of complex morphological transformations in living systems and provide future practical applications of microfabrication and micromanipulation.
Highlights
Artificial swarming microrobotic systems have been extensively reported in recent decades
The various self-organizing microswarm patterns built by robotic scientists, such as liquid [17], chain [37,38], ribbon [39,40] and vortex [41,42,43,44], may help us to understand complex collective behaviors in living systems
TheThe dynamic microswarm waswas capable of performing rehighlevel levelofof pattern stability
Summary
Artificial swarming microrobotic systems have been extensively reported in recent decades. These systems could be energized by an external magnetic field [5,13,14,15,16,17], chemical reaction [4,18,19,20,21], electric field [22,23,24], light [25,26,27,28,29,30] or ultrasound field [6,31,32,33].
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