Investigation of a cuboidal permanent magnet’s force exerted on a robotic capsule

Abstract

Wan’an Yang,1 Chengbing Tang,2 Fengqing Qin1 1School of Computer and Information Engineering, Yibin University, Yibin, 2CNPC Chuanqing Geophysical Prospecting Company Research Center Computer Department, Chengdu, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China Abstract: To control and drive a robotic capsule accurately from outside a patient’s body, we present a schema in which the capsule enclosing the imaging device, circuits, batteries, etc is looped by a permanent magnet ring that acts as an actuator. A cuboidal permanent magnet situated outside the patient's body attracts or pushes the magnet ring from different directions to make the capsule move or rotate. A mathematic model of attractive or repulsive force that the cuboidal magnet exerts on the magnet ring is presented for accurate calculation of force. The experiments showed that the measuring force was in agreement with the theoretical one, and the relations between the dimensions of the cuboidal magnet and force are useful to produce a cuboidal magnet with optimal shape to get appropriate force. Keywords: control and drive, robotic capsule, permanent magnet ring, optimal dimension, force model