Magnetic Helical Nanorobot Propulsion

Magnetically-actuated helical nanorobots are one of the most experimentally realised classes of untethered micro/nanorobot: a corkscrew-shaped body carrying a small magnetic moment, driven purely by an external rotating magnetic field, with no onboard motor or battery. This simulator renders a swarm of such robots in a microfluidic channel and drives them with a live rotating-field control, using resistive-force theory to compute real corkscrew propulsion: swim speed from the pitch-angle-dependent drag anisotropy, and the critical "step-out" frequency above which the body can no longer stay synchronised with the field and stalls. Tune frequency, field strength, helix pitch angle and fluid viscosity and watch the swarm accelerate, and then desynchronise, exactly as demonstrated in real magnetic-microrobot experiments proposed for applications like wireless, gravity-independent drug delivery.