Untethered Magnetic Robots (UMRs) show promising potential for different medical applications. A "Drilling UMR" (DUMR) design is proposed to be able to drill through soft tissue, but should also still be able to swim. A computational fluid dynamics model was developed to determine the terminal swimming velocity for different UMR designs, the DUMR being one of them. Validation experiments using the DUMR design are proposed and conducted, and results are compared to the simulation to validate the model.
Velocity measurements show that the DUMR was, on average, able to reach velocities up to 10 mm/s, and show a possible linear increase of terminal velocity with frequency and thread-height, as predicted by the model. A big difference between simulated and tested velocities prevents the validation of the model, so possible changes are proposed to improve both the model and the validation experiments.