Musculoskeletal System-Mimetic Nanocomposite Robots for Agile and Multimodal Magnetic Swimming

Miniaturized magnetic swimming robots are drawing significant attention for their potential applications in non-surgical medical procedures. However, the single small-scale robot often suffers from poor performance results, which includes sluggish swimming velocity, insufficient drug loading, and inadequate power in removing arterial clogs. To overcome these limitations, we propose multimodal collective swimming of musculoskeletal system-mimetic nanocomposite robots. For agile magnetomotility, we employed carbon nanotube yarn (CNTY) as stiff yet lightweight nanoporous framework, filled with a mixture of polymer resin and magnetic particles. Under a pulsed electromagnetic field, this nanocomposite robot demonstrates an agile above water swimmability (~180 body lengths per second) and multi-modal swimming of magnetically jointed multiple robots. We will discuss important parameters affecting the magnetomotility of the nanocomposite robots and demonstrate performance of difficult tasks for a single robot.