Main description:

Microbiorobotics is a new engineering discipline that inherently involves a multidisciplinary approach (mechanical engineering, cellular biology, mathematical modeling, control systems, synthetic biology, etc). Building robotics system in the micro scale is an engineering task that has resulted in many important applications, ranging from micromanufacturing techniques to cellular manipulation. However, it is also a very challenging engineering task. One of the reasons is because many engineering ideas and principles that are used in larger scales do not scale well to the micro-scale. For example, locomotion principles in a fluid do not function in the same way, and the use of rotational motors is impractical because of the difficulty of building of the required components.

Contents:

Introduction

B: Fundamentals of Cellular Mechanics

B.1: Fluid-structure Interactions and Flagellar Actuation

B.2: Mathematical Models for Swimming Bacteria

B.3: Tetrahymena pyriformis in Motion

C: Theoretical Microbiorobotics

C.1: Piezoelectric Cellular Actuators with Nested Rhombus Strain Amplification

C.2: Stochastic Models and Control of Bacterial Bioactuators and Biomicrorobots

C.3: Stochastic Model and Control in Microbiorobotics

D: Experimental Microbiorobotics

D.1: Bacteria-Inspired Microrobots

D.2: Magnetotactic Bacteria for Microrobotics

D.3: Flexible magnetic microswimmers

D.4: Bacteria-Powered Microrobots

D.5: Control of Tetrahymena pyriformis as a Microrobot

E: Perspectives and Outlook