# Topics > Medical robotics and AI > Microrobotics. Nanorobotics. >  Micro Bio Robots (MBRs), GRASP Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

## Airicist

Developer - GRASP Laboratory

Home page - grasp.upenn.edu/projects/micro-bio-robots

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## Airicist

"Assessment of protein binding with magnetic microrobots in fluid"

by Edward B. Steager, Blaine Zern, Mahmut Selman Sakar, Vladimir Muzykantov, Vijay Kumar

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## Airicist

Micro Assembly Using Magnetic Robots

Published on Feb 29, 2016




> Directed Micro Assembly of Passive Particles at Fluid Interfaces Using Magnetic Robots
> 
> We combine strategies for passive particle assembly in soft matter with robotics to develop new means of controlled interaction. In capillary assembly, particles distort fluid interfaces and move in directions that minimize the surface area. In particular, they move along principle axes on curved interfaces to sites of high curvature via capillary migration. We propose a robot that serves as a programmable source of fluid curvature and allows the collection of passive particles. When settled on a fluid interface, the magnetic robot distorts the interface, which strongly influences curvature capillary migration. The shape of the robot dictates the interface shape, for example, by imposing high interface curvature near corners, create sites of preferred assembly. This freedom to manipulate interface curvature dynamically and to migrate laterally on the interface creates new possibilities for directed bottom-up particle assemblies and precise manipulation of these complex assembled structures. Since the passive particles can be functionalized to sense, report and interact with their surroundings, this work paves the way to new schemes for creation and control of functionalized micro robots.

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## Airicist

Assessment of Protein Binding Using Magnetic Microrobots in Fluid

Published on Mar 2, 2016




> For applications such as targeting therapeutic nanocarriers to specific tissues, as well as for the more general problem of assessing binding affinity between proteins, it is important to discover tools which may be used for both micromanipulation as well as force microscopy. In this work, we measure picoscale forces using microscale robots, using antibody-coated microbead probes as an interface. We develop a model for a detailed understanding of the relationship between robot velocity and applied force, and apply this to the measurement of binding forces between antibody-coated beads and protein-coated glass slides. We also verify binding between specific antibody/protein combinations relative to untargeted control combinations, and we measure the rate at which this binding occurs. This offers a truly novel technique for measuring binding forces between proteins.

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## Airicist

Automated Cell Manipulation using Magnetic Mircrorobots

Published on Mar 2, 2016

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