Designing robots that can navigate tight spaces, move collectively, and adapt to changing environments remains a major challenge in several fields, including medicine. Traditional robotic systems cannot function at microscopic scales, leaving unmet needs in drug delivery, among others. Now, a new multi-institution collaboration aims to address this gap by developing adaptive magnetic microrobot swarms capable of navigating complex terrains under external control.

This collaborative four-year project, led by Rice University (Houston, TX, USA), will combine modeling, simulation, and experiment to engineer materials with collective intelligence. The research team is building micron-scale magnetic colloidal particles that self-organize into swarms when exposed to time-varying magnetic fields. These fields act as external controllers, enabling the tiny robots to move through fluids, across surfaces, and around obstacles.

By integrating large-scale simulations, analytical theory, and experimental validation, the group aims to reveal the design principles that allow swarms to adapt, coordinate, and reconfigure dynamically. Early findings suggest this approach could lead to programmable materials with real-world utility. Potential applications include delivering therapeutics inside the body — a task where conventional robots cannot operate at such small scales.

“We’re inspired by nature’s ability to organize simple units into complex, responsive systems,” said Sibani Lisa Biswal at Rice University. “By understanding those dynamics at the microscopic level, we can translate them into new materials that think and move.”

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