LCSR Seminar: Jinxing Li

Description

Jinxing Li, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering at Michigan State University, will give a talk titled "Emerging Micro/Nanorobotics: from Locomotion to Biomedical Applications" for the Laboratory for Computational Sensing + Robotics.

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Abstract:

Robotic systems have markedly extended human capabilities in sensing, interacting, manipulating, and transforming the world around us. The design of miniaturized and versatile robots on the scale of tens or a few micrometers would enable access throughout the human body, paving the way for procedures at the cellular level and offering localized diagnosis and treatment with unprecedented precision and efficiency. However, unlike large-scale robots, the development of microrobots also faces challenges in locomotion, manufacturing, control, and intelligence. This presentation will discuss our recent efforts to overcome these challenges using innovative engineering techniques and material designs to create miniaturized machines with adaptive locomotion and biomedical functions. I will first discuss the fundamental challenges of nanoscale locomotion and demonstrate how our bio-inspired designs tackle these issues through untethered magnetic nanorobots that achieve efficient locomotion and collective control. Next, I will highlight our development of self-propelled microrockets, which represent a breakthrough in microrobot-based disease treatment within the gastrointestinal tract of living animals. Finally, I will present our advancements using innovative soft materials, from liquid crystal elastomers to hyperelastic hydrogels, to make miniaturized robots with highly adaptive locomotion and transformation. Together, these innovations lay the groundwork for a new era of precision medicine driven by miniaturized machines and robots.