David Folio

• PhD. Robotics Control
• Professor (Associate) at Institut National des Sciences Appliquées Centre Val de Loire

This paper presents the endovascular navigation of a ferromagnetic microdevice using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based predictive control. The concept was studied for the future development of microrobots designed to perform minimally invasive interventions in remote sites accessible through the human cardiovascular system. A system software a...

Microinjection is a method for the delivery of exogenous materials into cells and is widely used in biomedical research areas such as transgenics and genomics. However, this direct injection is a time-consuming and laborious task, resulting in low throughput and poor reproducibility. Here, we describe a telerobotic shared control framework for micr...

This work presents a preoperative microrobotic surgical simulation and planning application. The main contribution is to support computer-aided minimally invasive surgery (MIS) procedure using untethered microrobots that have to navigate within the arterial networks. We first propose a fast interactive application (with endovascular tissues) able t...

Microscale robots introduce great perspectives into many medical applications such as drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, and localized biometric diagnostics. Fully automatic microrobots' real-time detection and tracking using medical imagers are actually investigated for future clinical translation. Ultrasound (US) B-mode imaging has been e...

The aim of this study was to design a multipole-electromagnet robotic platform named OctoRob. This platform provides a minimally invasive means for targeted therapeutic interventions in specific intraocular areas. OctoRob is capable of generating both appropriate magnetic fields and gradients. The main scientific objectives were: (i) To propose an...

Chemically driven micromotors display unpredictable trajectories due to the rotational Brownian motion interacting with the surrounding fluid molecules. This hampers the practical applications of these tiny robots, particularly where precise control is a requisite. To overcome the rotational Brownian motion and increase motion directionality, robot...

Purpose of Review This review presents different types of electromagnetic actuation (EMA) microrobotic systems that have been designed for various principles of magnetic microrobot locomotion for any given tasks. Recent Findings Many proposed EMA systems can be significantly improved in terms of performance including magnetic field and its gradien...

Micro-scale robots introduce great prospective into many different medical applications such as targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery and localized bio-metric diagnostics. This research presents a method for object detection and tracking system of a chain-like magnetic microsphere robots using ultrasound imaging in an in-vitro environm...

This study theoretically investigates the modeling of spherical catalytic self-phoretic magnetic Janus microrobot (MJR) evolving in uniform viscous flow. A 2-D state-space representation of the MJR is developed, exhibiting a state-dependent-coefficient (SDC) form. To evaluate the consistency of the modeling formalism, a dual Kalman filter (DKF) met...

Featured Application Targeted drug delivery using magnetic micro/nanorobots. Abstract Magnetic microrobotics is a promising technology for improving minimally invasive surgery (MIS) with the ambition of enhancing patient care and comfort. The potential benefits include limited incisions, less hemorrhaging and postoperative pain, and faster recover...

This research work mainly focuses on the study of the modeling and control of microrobotic systems in a biomedical context. So far, the use of magnetic actuation has been regarded as the most convenient approach for such achievements. Besides, the cardiovascular system allows reaching most parts of the human body and is then chosen as the main navi...

Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) are very attractive components in many biomedical applications, particularly as therapeutic magnetic microcarriers (TMMC) for drug delivery. Although MNPs can be effectively gathered and transported using external magnetic fields, the optimal delivery is yet to be fully investigated. In this paper, we discuss the model...

Magnetic actuation techniques and microrobots have attracted great interest since they have potential in biomedicine applications. Interventional techniques have emerged as a tool to handle a wide range of minimally invasive surgeries (MIS). However, current MIS procedures are constrained by the limitation of manual operation by surgeon. Thus, vari...

The magnetic microrobot have the potential to assist surgeon to perform precision medical procedures by using electromagnetic actuation (EMA) system. Various EMA system can provide desired magnetic field and gradient for the locomotion control of magnetized microrobot. Investigation of the performance of EMA system is reported to effectively select...

Wireless magnetic microrobots can perform complex tasks for small-scale minimally invasive surgery (MIS) that requires high precision and dexterity. The choice of the configuration of the electromagnetic actuation (EMA) system is a key issue for reliable medical applications. This paper addresses the study of a robotic EMA platform firstly devoted...

To enhance locoregional therapies for liver cancer treatment, we propose in this study a mathematical model to optimize the transcatheter arterial delivery of therapeutic agents. To maximize the effect of the treatment and minimize adverse effects on the patient, different mathematical models of the tumor growth are considered in this study to find...

This paper describes the propulsion of the catalytic tubular microjet in confined environments as microchannels and capillaries using the Stokes equations. Especially, the thrust capability of the microjet is outstanding compared with the other microsystems, but remains only partially understood. Studies have identified the internal precursory mech...

Innovations in microrobotics: biomedical perspectives Microrobotic is an emerging interdisciplinary technology area raising new scientific challenges and promising revolutionary advancements, especially for biomedical applications. For instance, in cancer therapy direct targeting therapeutic microrobotic agents can navigate in the vascular network...

We report the partial core-shell nanowire motors. These nanowires are fabricated using our previously developed electrodeposition-based technique, and their catalytic locomotion in the presence of H2O2 is investigated. Unlike conventional bimetallic nanowires that are self-electroosmotically propelled, our Au/Ru core-shell nanowires show both a not...

This paper analyses the interaction forces between two magnetic boluses for future drug targeting applications. To transport the drugs, it is necessary to convey several therapeutic magnetic boluses using magnetic gradients. The main difficulty is to control a group of different therapeutic boluses at desired states, despite the presence of interac...

The propulsion of ferromagnetic objects by means of MRI gradients is a promising approach to enable new forms of therapy. In this work, necessary techniques are presented to make this approach work. This includes path planning algorithms working on MRI data, ferromagnetic artifact imaging and a tracking algorithm which delivers position feedback fo...

To enhance locoregional therapies for liver cancer treatment, we propose in this study a mathematical model to optimize the transcatheter arterial delivery of therapeutical agents. To maximize the effect of the treatment and minimize adverse effects on the patient, different mathematical models of the tumor growth are considered in this study to fi...

This paper presents an optimal design strategy for magnetic targeting of therapeutic drugs. In this study, to maximize the effect of the treatment and minimize adverse effects on the patient, mathematical models have been developed to find the number and the size of the boluses with respect to the growth of a tumor. Using these models, control stra...

This paper describes the propulsion of the catalytic tubular microjet using Navier-Stokes equations. Especially, the thrust capability of the microjet is outstanding compared with the other microsystems, but remains only partially understood. Studies have identified the internal precursory mechanisms of the propulsion of the microjet: its inner wal...

This paper presents an optimal design strategy for therapeutic magnetic micro carriers (TMMC) guided in real time by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system. As aggregates of TMMCs must be formed to carry the most amount of drug and magnetic actuation capability, different clustering agglomerations could be arranged. Nevertheless, its difficult t...

This paper presents an optimal design strategy for therapeutic magnetic micro carriers (TMMC) guided in real time by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system. As aggregates of TMMCs must be formed to carry themostamount of drug and magnetic actuation capability, different clustering agglomerations could be arranged. Nevertheless, its difficult to...

Magnetic microrobotics was nowadays one of the most advanced technique to reach deep locations in human body for future biomedical applications. Different magnetic microrobot designs were proposed, such as bead pulling or microswimmers. In this paper, the use of chain-like of magnetic N-microspheres was investigated to enable new kind of motions an...

This paper reports a control strategy of two AFM gripper for manipulation on analysis Beam, using dual micro/nano manipulators in order to grippe a micro spherical ball and tacking-maintain on the focus of laser beam. The main idea is to control and drive AFM gripper to expose micro samples in the laser beam by localization of the maximum intensity...

This paper reports a control strategy of two AFM gripper for manipulation on analysis Beam, using dual micro/nano manipulators in order to grippe a micro spherical ball and tacking-maintain on the focus of laser beam. The main idea is to control and drive AFM gripper to expose micro samples in the laser beam by localization of the maximum intensity...

This paper has presented a new vision-based force-sensing framework that allows to characterize the forces applied on a magnetic microrobot in an endovascular-like environment. Especially, unlike common approaches used with optical microscopy where orthographic projection model are used, we consider in this paper the weak-perspective model. The pro...

In this paper we aim to characterize and validate the system's dynamic model of a magnetic microrobot navigating in viscous flow. First, the controlled magnetic forces exerted on the magnetic microrobot was calibrated, validating the magnetic model. Secondly, the external forces were characterized on-line from digital microscope measurements. Espec...

This paper presents a study of the control problem of a laser beam illuminating and focusing a microobject subjected to dynamic disturbances using light intensity for feedback only. The main idea is to guide and track the beam with a hybrid micro/nanomanipulator which is driven by a control signal generated by processing the beam intensity sensed b...

This paper presents a robotized tele-echography system with an assisting visibility mode that helps the medical expert diagnosis. This autonomous mode is based on a multitask control approach that maintains the visibility of an anatomic element of interest while the medical expert tele-operates a 2D ultrasound probe held by a 4-DoF robot. The main...

This paper presents a study of the control problem of a laser beam illuminating and focusing a microobject subjected to dynamic disturbances using light intensity for feedback only. The main idea is to guide and track the beam with a hybrid micro/nanomanipulator which is driven by a control signal generated by processing the beam intensity sensed b...

In this paper we aim to characterize and validate the system's dynamic model of a magnetic microrobot navigating in viscous flow. First, the controlled magnetic forces exerted on the magnetic microrobot was calibrated, validating the magnetic model. Secondly, the external forces were characterized on-line from digital microscope measurements. Espec...

The literature provides many techniques to design efficient control laws to realize robotic navigation tasks. In recent years, the sensors improvement gave rise to the sensor-based control which allows to define the robotic task in the sensor space rather than in the configuration space. In this context, as cameras provide high-rate meaningful data...

Navigating in bodily fluids to perform targeted diagnosis and therapy has recently raised the problem of robust control of magnetic microrobots under real endovascular conditions. Various control approaches have been proposed in the literature but few of them have been experimentally validated. In this paper, we point out the problem of navigation...

Navigating in bodily fluids to perform targeted diagnosis and therapy has recently raised the problem of robust control of magnetic microrobots under real endovascular conditions. Various control approaches have been proposed in the literature but few of them have been experimentally validated. In this paper, we point out the problem of navigation...

MRI based nano- and microrobotics show good potential for new targeted therapies tackling e.g. cancer. In this paper, a system developed for the propulsion and navigation of small ferromagnetic objects only using clinical MRI systems is evaluated in experiments. The experiments include propulsion of an untethered ferromagnetic object against a puls...

A magnetic resonance imaging system is described for (MRi) navigation of microrobots for targeted therapy in cardiovascular systems. the software architecture of the robotic platform is presented, the MRi constraints are discussed, and a linear model of the microrobotic system is examined for navigating in vessels. A navigation path planning method...

We address the problem of multi-sensor-based navigation in a cluttered environment for a non-holonomic robot. To perform such a successful and safe navigation, three controllers realizing, respectively, nominal vision-based navigation, obstacle bypassing and occlusion avoidance have been designed using the task function approach. Then it suffices t...

The propulsion of nano-ferromagnetic objects by means of MRI gradients is a promising approach to enable new forms of therapy. In this work, necessary techniques are presented to make this approach work. This includes path plan- ning algorithms working on MRI data, ferromagnetic artifact imaging and a tracking algorithm which delivers position feed...

Microinjection is the highly efficient delivery method of exogenous materials into cells, and it has been widely used in biomedical research areas such as transgenics and genomics. However, this direct injection task is time consuming and laborious, resulting in low throughput and poor reproducibility. This paper describes a telerobotic shared cont...

This paper presents real-time MRI-based control of a ferromagnetic microcapsule for endovascular navigation. The concept was studied for future development of microdevices designed to perform minimally invasive interventions in remote sites accessible through the human cardiovascular system. A system software architecture is presented illustrating...

This paper presents an endovascular navigation of a ferromagnetic microdevice using a MRI-based predictive control. The concept was studied for future development of microrobot designed to perform minimally invasive interventions in remote sites accessible through the human cardiovascular system. A system software architecture is presented illustra...

In this paper we propose a new on-line sensor self-calibration framework. The approach is to consider the sensor/robot interaction that links the sensor signal variations to the robot velocity. By on-line calibration, we mean only the actual measurements are used to perform calibration under the condition that the interaction matrix is analytically...

This paper presents real-time MRI-based control of a ferromagnetic microcapsule for endovascular navigation. The concept was studied for future development of microdevices designed to perform minimally invasive interventions in remote sites accessible through the human cardiovascular system. A system software architecture is presented illustrating...

In this chapter, we addressed the problem of computing the image features when they become unavailable during a vision-based task. To this aim, in a first step, we have elaborated different algorithms able to reconstruct the visual signals when they are lost. The proposed techniques rely on the camera kinematic screw and on the last measured percep...

This paper deal with the problem of executing a vision-based task in an unknown environment. During such a task, two unexpected events may occur: the image data loss due to a camera occlusion and the robot collision with obstacles. We first propose a method allowing to compute the visual data when they are totally lost, before addressing the obstac...

In this paper, we address the problem of computing the image features when they become temporarily unavailable during a vision-based navigation task. The method consists in analytically integrating the relation between the visual features motion in the image and the camera motion. Then, we use this approach to design sensor-based control laws able...

La synthèse de lois de commande efficaces apparaît comme un enjeu important dans la réalisation autonome de tâches de navigation robotiques. Ce problème peut être abordé par différentes approches. L'une d'entre elles, la commande référencée capteur, permet de définir les boucles de commande directement à partir des mesures sensorielles au lieu de l...

This paper provides a new method allowing to safely perform a vision-based task amidst possibly occluding obstacles. Our objective is to fulfill the following two requirements: first, the robot safety by guaranteeing noncollision; second, the ability of keeping on realizing the vision-based task despite possible target occlusions or loss. To this a...

In this paper, we address the problem of estimating image features whenever they become unavailable during a vision-based navigation task. The method consists in analytically integrating the relation linking the visual features motion in the image to the 3D camera motion. Simulation results validate our work.

In this paper, we address the problem of estimating image features whenever they become unavailable during a vision-based task. The method consists in using numerical algorithm to compute the lacking data and allows to treat both partial and total visual features loss. Simulation and experimental results validate our work for two different visual-s...

This paper presents a sensor-based controller allowing to visually drive a mobile robot towards a target while avoiding visual features occlusions and obstacle collisions. We consider the model of a cart-like robot equipped with proximetric sensors and a camera mounted on a pan-platform. The proposed method relies on the continuous switch between t...

This paper presents a redundancy-based scheme allowing to avoid both occlusions and obstacles for a mobile robot performing a vision-based task in a cluttered environment. We consider the model of a cart-like robot equipped with ultrasonic sensors and a camera mounted on a pan-platform. The proposed method relies on the continuous switch between se...

This article presents a redundancy-based control strategy allowing a mobile robot to avoid simultaneously occlusions and obstacles while performing a vision-based task. The proposed method relies on the continuous switch between two controllers realizing respectively the nominal vision-based task and the occlusion and obstacle avoidance. Simulation...

This paper presents a method allowing to perform safely a vision-based navigation task amidst obstacles. The proposed technique is therefore expected to guarantee both collision and occlusion avoidance. The idea is to use visual servoing techniques together with classical path following control law to avoid occlusion and collision whenever they may...