http://www.livescience.com/technology/050915_smallest_robot.html

The World’s Smallest Robot

By Bjorn Carey
LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 15 September 2005


Researchers have built an inchworm-like robot so small you need a
microscope just to see it.

In fact about 200 hundred of them could line up and do the conga across a
plain M&M.  

The tiny bot measures about 60 micrometers wide (about the width of a
human hair) by 250 micrometers long, making it the smallest untethered,
controllable microrobot ever.

"It's tens of times smaller in length, and thousands of times smaller in
mass than previous untethered microrobots that are controllable," said
designer Bruce Donald of Dartmouth University. "When we say
‘controllable,' it means it's like a car; you can steer it anywhere on a
flat surface, and drive it wherever you want to go. It doesn't drive on
wheels, but crawls like a silicon inchworm, making tens of thousands of
10-nanometer steps every second. It turns by putting a silicon 'foot' out
and pivoting like a motorcyclist skidding around a tight turn."

Because it makes use of this innovative bending movement and is
untethered, it can move freely across a surface without the wires or rails
that restricted the mobility of previously developed microrobots. The
caterpillar strategy also helped the researchers avoid a common problem in
microrobotics.

"Machines this small tend to stick to everything they touch, the way sand
sticks to your feet after a day at the beach," said Craig McGray of the
National Institute of Standards and Technology. "So we built these
microrobots without any wheels or hinged joints, which must slide smoothly
on their bearings. Instead, these robots move by bending their bodies like
caterpillars. At very small scales, this machine is surprisingly fast."

To get around, the robot makes use of two independent microactuators - the
robot's "muscles." One is for forward motion and the other for turning.

It doesn't have pre-programmed directions. Instead, it reacts to electric
changes in the grid of electrodes it moves on. This grid also supplies the
microrobot with the power needed to make these movements.

This microrobot and similar versions that could be developed might
eventually ensure information security, inspect and make repairs to
integrated circuits, explore hazardous environments, or even manipulate
human cells or tissues.

This research will be presented in October at the International Symposium
of Robotics Research in San Francisco. It will also be detailed in an
upcoming issue of the Journal of Microelectrochemical Systems.



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