Key points from article :
The artificial cilia that can beat just like the real thing.
They rely on magnetic fields to generate movement.
Movement of tiny soft robots in a variety of ways to ‘walk’ up vertical surfaces.
Soft robots have enormous biomedical potential.
Manipulating small devices is challenging, requiring some ingenuity.
The researchers incorporated carbonyl iron powder particles into a polymer mixture.
They used this to create small cilia-like projections by pouring the polymer into a mold.
They used rotating magnets to create a magnetic field around the resulting soft robot.
Which stimulated the cilia to move in a traveling wave because of the slightly different magnetic properties in adjacent cilia.
This technology could also be useful to propel very small amounts of water through microfluidic systems.
Research by Eindhoven University of Technology published in ACS Publications.
