Trajectory Planning of Motile Cell for Microrobotic Applications

Abstract

Our goal is to use motile microorganisms as smart microscale robots for a variety of applications. As a first step, we have achieved microrobotic control of Paramecium cell movement using galvanotaxis (locomotor response to electrical stimulus). Previous studies based on simple empirical rules that did not consider cell dynamics had only limited control. To control cells more precisely as microrobots, we must deal with Paramecium cells in the standard robotics framework. This paper is, to our knowledge, the first attempt in trajectory planning of Paramecium cells under an electric field using a dynamics model for microrobotic applications. Based on the original dynamics model, we propose trajectory planning for cells using a common well-known Lyapunov-like approach and generate cusp-free trajectories. We discuss how to generate stable streamlined trajectories for living cells in a step toward actual control. Numerical experiments demonstrate the successful stable convergence of cell trajectories to the desired location and attitude, which should prove useful in the advanced guidance of cells.