Noncontact Magnetic Manipulation Using Permanent Magnets: System Architecture and Experimental Validation

This paper reports experimental results as the proof of concept to a novel approach for noncontact manipulation of magnetic objects using a combination of permanent magnets and mechanical actuators. In this approach, magnetic fields inside the workspace of magnetic manipulators are generated by arrays of permanent magnets, and are controlled by physical movement of the magnets using mechanical actuators. By feedback control of these actuators, the magnetic fields can be leveraged to precisely control the position of magnetic objects inside the workspace. To verify the proposed approach experimentally, it was realized by two laboratory setups with diametrically magnetized permanent magnets and rotary servomotors, and with axially magnetized permanent magnets and linear servomotors. In the first setup, the magnetic field inside its circular workspace is controlled by the directions of the magnets, while in the second, magnetic field is controlled by the distances of the magnets from its workspace. For each setup, a feedback law was designed and implemented to steer a small magnetic bead along complex reference trajectories inside the workspace. The control performance was evaluated by several experiments on both laboratory setups.