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At the microscale, coupled physical interactions between collectives of agents can be exploited to enable self-organization. Past systems typically consist of identical agents; however, heterogeneous agents can exhibit asymmetric pairwise interactions which can be used to generate more diverse patterns of self-organization. Here, we study the effect of size heterogeneity in microrobot collectives composed of circular, magnetic microdisks on a fluid–air interface. Each microrobot spins or oscillates about its center axis in response to an external oscillating magnetic field, in turn producing local magnetic, hydrodynamic, and capillary forces that enable diverse collective behaviors. We demonstrate through physical experiments and simulations that the heterogeneous collective can exploit the differences in microrobot size to enable programmable self-organization, density, morphology, and interaction with external passive objects. Specifically, we can control the level of self-organization by microrobot size, enable organized aggregation, dispersion, and locomotion, change the overall shape of the collective from circular to ellipse, and cage or expel objects. We characterize the fundamental self-organization behavior across a parameter space of magnetic field frequency, relative disk size, and relative populations; we replicate the behavior through a physical model and a swarming coupled oscillator model to show that the dominant effect stems from asymmetric interactions between the different-sized disks. Our work furthers insights into self-organization in heterogeneous microrobot collectives and moves us closer to the goal of applying such collectives to programmable self-assembly and active matter.

 

Abstract Mobile microrobots, which can navigate, sense, and interact with their environment, could potentially revolutionize biomedicine and environmental remediation. Many self-organizing microrobotic collectives have been developed to overcome inherent limits in actuation, sensing, and manipulation of individual microrobots; however, reconfigurable collectives with robust transitions between behaviors are rare. Such systems that perform multiple functions are advantageous to operate in complex environments. Here, we present a versatile microrobotic collective system capable of on-demand reconfiguration to adapt to and utilize their environments to perform various functions at the air–water interface. Our system exhibits diverse modes ranging from isotropic to anisotrpic behaviors and transitions between a globally driven and a novel self-propelling behavior. We show the transition between different modes in experiments and simulations, and demonstrate various functions, using the reconfigurability of our system to navigate, explore, and interact with the environment. Such versatile microrobot collectives with globally driven and self-propelled behaviors have great potential in future medical and environmental applications.