Vector-Controlled Wheel-Like Magnetic Swarms With Multimodal Locomotion and Reconfigurable Capabilities

Inspired by the biological collective behaviors of nature, artificial microrobotic swarms have exhibited environmental adaptability and tasking capabilities for biomedicine and micromanipulation. Complex environments are extremely relevant to the applications of microswarms, which are expected to travel in blood vessels, reproductive and digestive tracts, and microfluidic chips. Here we present a strategy that reconfigures paramagnetic nanoparticles into a vector-controlled microswarm with 3D collective motions by programming sawtooth magnetic fields. Horizontal swarms can be manipulated to stand vertically and swim like a wheel by adjusting the direction of magnetic-field plane. Compared with horizontal swarms, vertical wheel-like swarms were evaluated to be of approximately 15-fold speed increase and enhanced maneuverability, which was exhibited by striding across complex 3D confinements. Based on analysis of collective behavior of magnetic particles in flow field using molecular dynamics methods, a rotary stepping mechanism was proposed to address the formation and locomotion mechanisms of wheel-like swarm. we present a strategy that actuates swarms to stand and hover in situ under a programming swing magnetic fields, which provides suitable solutions to travel across confined space with unexpected changes, such as stepped pipes. By biomimetic design from fin motion of fish, wheel-like swarms were endowed with multi-modal locomotion and load-carrying capabilities. This design of intelligent microswarms that adapt to complicated biological environments can promote the applications ranging from the construction of smart and multifunctional materials to biomedical engineering.