FRR: Programmable soft microrobots with amoeboid locomotion within porous microenvironments

This Foundational Research in Robotics (FRR) project pioneers a new class of magnetic soft microrobots capable of locomotion within confined and porous environments, such as biological tissues. Existing microrobots primarily rely on swimming-based propulsion, which becomes ineffective in densely packed, wall-confined environments. In contrast, most mammalian cells migrate through tissues by dramatically altering their shape, a strategy this project seeks to replicate using soft materials with magnetically encoded shape-changing instructions. The objective of this research is to create a new class of programmable, cell-sized microrobots that can deform and crawl through tortuous paths using bioinspired locomotion. The findings could lead to new therapeutic strategies, including navigating tumor tissue for targeted drug delivery, and inspire designs for robust micro- or macro-scale robots capable of navigating other complex, unstructured terrains, such as soil in agriculture or rubble in disaster response. The educational plan will contribute to building a skilled STEM workforce through curriculum development, mentoring, and outreach activities, including engagement of undergraduate and K-12 students. The project will integrate high-resolution microfabrication techniques with a heat-assisted magnetic programming approach to produce cell-sized robots made from magnetic soft materials. These robots will be programmed with spatially distributed magnetization profiles that enable complex and rapid shape transformations in response to external magnetic fields. A data-driven optimization framework will be constructed to systematically design robot morphology and magnetic encoding for desired locomotion characteristics. The resulting microrobots will be experimentally validated in synthetic and biological porous media to assess their crawling and navigation capabilities. The outcomes will include a scalable microfabrication and magnetic programming platform, an efficient magneto-morphological design strategy, and a new class of magnetic soft microrobots that mimic amoeboid locomotion. Together, these efforts aim to establish foundational knowledge and tools for constructing microrobots with mechanically and magnetically encoded physical intelligence for traversing tissue-like environments, advancing new frontiers in robotics, materials science, and biomedical engineering. 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.