A Control Interface for Autonomous Positioning of Magnetically Actuated Spheres Using an Artificial Neural Network

Electromagnet arrays show significant potential in the untethered guidance of particles, devices, and eventually robots. However, complications in obtaining accurate models of electromagnetic fields pose challenges for precision control. Manipulation often requires the reduced-order modeling of physical systems, which may be computationally complex and may still not account for all possible system dynamics. Additionally, control schemes capable of being applied to electromagnet arrays of any configuration may significantly expand the usefulness of any control approach. In this study, we developed a data-driven approach to the magnetic control of a neodymium magnets (NdFeB magnetic sphere) using a simple, highly constrained magnetic actuation architecture. We developed and compared two regression-based schemes for controlling the NdFeB sphere in the workspace of a four-coil array of electromagnets. We obtained averaged submillimeter positional control (0.85 mm) of a NdFeB hard magnetic sphere in a 2D plane using a controller trained using a single-layer, five-input regression neural network with a single hidden layer.