Harnessing Bacterial Power for Micro scale Manipulation and Locomotion

This paper develops a novel approach to microscale locomotion and manipulation using flagellated bacteria for actuation. We use a blotting procedure to attach flagellated bacteria to a buoyancy-neutral plate called a microbarge and deploy the plate in a microchannel . The motion of the plate depends on the propulsion of the bacteria which in turn depends on the distribution of the cells on the plate and the stimuli from the environment. We construct a stochastic mathematical model for the system, and use experimental data for identifying the relevant parameters in the model. We then demonstrate that the model with the estimated parameters is able to predict the behavior of the system. One of the key findings in this paper is that although the system is inherently distributed, in the sense that there are a large number of independent actuators, we can construct an accurate model with only a few parameters representing the distribution of the bacteria. This fact demonstrates a high degree of robustness of the behavior of the microbarge with respect to the variation of the distribution of individual bacteria.