Development of a crawling microrobot with high steering capability and high stability to navigate through sharply bent human blood vessels

Abstract

We develop a crawling microrobot with high stability and high steering capability to navigate through a sharply bent tubular environment. The proposed microrobot can stably crawl forward and backward using the asymmetric friction force between a flexible leg and a wall. Our design can effectively change the moving direction even in sharply bent tubular environments using both the magnetic torque and the propulsive force generated by the crawling motion. The steering angle of the microrobot is simulated using a mathematical model of cantilever beam. We then perform various experiments to verify the validity of the proposed microrobot.