Simultaneous and Independent Micromanipulation of Two Identical Particles with Robotic Electromagnetic Needles

Funding Information: *Research supported by Academy of Finland Project 331149 and 328239. 1Authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation, School of Electrical Engineering, Aalto University, 00076, Aalto. Finland. 2Author is with the Department of Applied Physics, School of Science, Aalto University, 00076, Aalto. Finland. All email addresses: firstname.lastname@aalto.fi. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 IEEE. Magnetic manipulation of particles at close vicinity is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose simultaneous and independent manipulation of two identical particles at close vicinity using two mobile robotic electromagnetic needles. We developed a neural network that can predict the magnetic flux density gradient for any given needle positions. Using the neural network, we developed a control algorithm to solve the optimal needle positions that generate the forces in the required directions while keeping a safe distance between the two needles and particles. We applied our method in five typical cases of simultaneous and independent microparticle manipulation, with the closest particle separation of 30 μm.