Microscopic Robots Push New Robotics Frontier

US scientists have introduced cell-scale, self-contained robots that create novel opportunities in medicine, manufacturing, and the next level of robotics.

The researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan have been able to make the tiniest fully programmable autonomous robots to date, a significant addition to the study of robots. The microscopic machines, measuring less than the size of a grain of salt, possess the ability to move, sense, calculate, and respond to their surroundings without requiring external control.

Each robot is approximately 200 by 300 by 50 micrometers in dimension and costs approximately one cent to manufacture. The researchers suggest that the devices will have almost 10,000 times smaller sizes than current microbots, which brings a new operating scale to the application of robotics. Their results were in the magazines Science Robotics and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The robots do not have mechanical limbs; instead, the robots heat the surrounding liquid using electric fields and can propel the robots using the electric field to move the ions within the liquid. This method gives the possibility to move in a coordinated manner like a school of fish but is durable enough to last monthly when in operation.

Basic decision-making, sensing, and memory are possible because of ultra-low-power microcomputers built into the robots. Scientists consider that this progress could advance robotics in healthcare, environmental control, and small-scale manufacturing, which will form the basis of smart robot swarms operating in areas unreachable before.