CAREER: Magnetically Controlled Microfluidic Delivery and Locomotion in Miniature Soft Robots for Precision Medicine

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award supports research on miniature soft robots with magnetically controlled microfluidics for precision medicine, enabling safe, precise, and rapid access to confined spaces within the body for minimally invasive procedures. Despite recent advancements in the actuation, control, localization, and navigation of magnetically actuated soft robots, their functionality remains constrained by size and structural simplicity. To overcome these limitations while enabling complex and multifunctional performance, magnetically controlled microfluidics will be incorporated into miniature soft robots. The strategy of bridging mechanical deformation with magnetic control will be used to address the challenges associated with coupling fluidic operations and robot locomotion. The resulting robot looks to be able to navigate complex terrains and perform targeted procedures such as drug delivery, on-site biofluid pumping, and liquid biopsies facilitating early disease detection and therapeutic interventions with minimal invasiveness and side effects. Finally, a wide array of educational and outreach activities will complement the research effort, e.g., a new undergraduate course on bioinspired robotics, undergraduate research opportunities, and deployment of educational bioinspired soft robots in high schools, university classrooms, and a local adventure science center. The objective of this award is to develop miniature soft robots with integrated magnetically controlled microfluidics to enable liquid manipulation, while supporting multi-modal locomotion, including climbing, walking, crawling, and rolling in confined spaces. The remotely applied magnetic field will enable liquid pumping mechanisms as well as wireless valves for regulating fluidic operations. Strategies for the decoupled control of fluidic functions and robot locomotion on biological tissue surfaces look to be developed, e.g., magnetic thresholding and leveraging of spatial confinement, allowing for both precise fluid manipulation and effective navigation across complex terrains. Furthermore, intelligent control strategies seek to be implemented to enhance closed-loop control and intelligent navigation capabilities based on medical imaging and combination of model-based and data-driven techniques. The project looks to cover the full gamut of miniature soft robotic development, including design, fabrication processes, modeling and control methods, and software. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.