Position control of a ferromagnetic micro-particle in a dry environment

Most of current wireless micro-robotic systems evolve in liquids, as the predominance, at this scale, of surface adhesion makes it hard to control these systems in dry environments. The purpose of this article is to propose a method to improve wireless micro-devices performances in the air, by focusing on the workspace substrate. In this work, a magnetically actuated micro-particle is described and a strategy to limit the surface forces is presented. The micro-device behavior is studied and compared on five different surfaces. We demonstrate that reducing the electrical resistivity and the roughness of the surface helps improving the particle actuation occurrence. Furthermore, to validate the proposed approach, the particle is positioned with high precision using a closed loop control based on visual feedback. The micro-particle response is identified using a statistical approach over a large micro-particle response database.