Microrobot propulsion force generation using semiconductor based wireless power transfer coils

Abstract

Currently, various kinds of biomedical microrobots have been proposed for medical and industrial applications. In order to maximize the utilization of microrobots, a method of supplying electrical energy by wireless power transfer has been proposed. Nevertheless, one of the critical issues of microrobot is miniaturization. In this paper, we successfully demonstrated 2.6 mm sized microrobot using wireless power transfer system to produce the propulsion force and transfer electric power simultaneously. A micro robot with several millimeters was fabricated using a semiconductor process, which was used in experiments. A 2.6mm$\times 2.6$ mm sized spiral coil microrobot have been successfully demonstrated with 2.1mm/s.