Abstract
Micro-robotics is an emerging field of research where the focus areas are physical actuation, system control, materials, sensor research and so on. It is an interdisciplinary field where researchers from communities such as physics, chemistry, engineering (biotech, mechanical, comp science) have a role to play. A micro-robot is a controllable machine of micron scale with application specific capabilities in addition to generic functions such as motion, sensing and control mechanism. Scaling robotic systems to micro-scale, forces us to focus on physical parameters such as surface tension, adhesion and drag instead of mass and inertia. There has been research in development of actuation mechanisms at micron scale such as magnetically actuated rigid helices, cilia and sperm-mimetic synthetic tails, chemically powered spherical particles and cannons, synthetically engineered bacteria, muscle cells, etc. Parallel research in this field studies the swarm behaviour and control of such micro-robots. In this talk we will focus on the introduction to this field of research, look at some implementations and talk about our work on the study of the effect of external control on active particle behaviour. Akshatha Jagadish
Akshatha Jagadish is a PhD student at RBCCPS working with Prof. Manoj Varma (CeNSE). She received her B.Tech. degree in Electronics and Communication from PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore in 2015. She worked as Associate Software Engineer for Automotive Functional Safety at Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions, India during 2015-17. Her current research area is the field of micro-robotic system design and control.