My mind has been officially blown for today even if this isn’t exactly fresh news, just read that title “Magnetic Manipulation of Micro Robots for Eye Surgery” if I see my grand child teleport himself from the future right now in front of me, I will not be impressed. Not after what I just saw in this video.
We demonstrate five-degree-of-freedom (5-DOF) wireless magnetic control of a fully untethered microrobot (3-DOF position, 2-DOF pointing orientation). The microrobot can move through a large workspace, and is completely unrestrained in the rotation degrees of freedom. We accomplish this level of wireless control with an electromagnetic system that we call OctoMag. OctoMag’s unique abilities are due to its utilization of complex nonuniform magnetic fields, which capitalizes on a linear representation of the coupled field contributions of multiple soft-magnetic-core electromagnets acting in concert. OctoMag was primarily designed for the control of intraocular microrobots for delicate retinal procedures, but it also has potential uses in other medical applications or micromanipulation under an optical microscope.
