A Magnetic Actuation System Based on Electromagnetic Coils and Permanent Magnets for Controlling Capsule Robot

In this paper, we propose a magnetic actuation system (MAS) that integrates a pair of Helmholtz coils and three permanent magnets designed to control the position and attitude of a capsule robot. The three permanent magnets are controlled by motors to provide magnetic repulsive force, which are distributed at 120° in the plane. The Helmholtz coil provides a uniform magnetic field to control the capsule's attitude. A mathematical model of the proposed MAS based on the magnetic dipole model has been established to calculate the magnetic field in the workspace and the forces on the capsule robot. An optimization problem is designed to estimate the parameters of the permanent magnets when controlling the robot. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed system in levitating the capsule robot has been verified with experiments.