Engineering experts from Northwestern University recently presented their newest robotic innovation, constructed with a small body. The tiny machine can maneuver through platforms by walking and can be controlled remotely by its user.
Crab-Inspired Microscale Robot
A tiny walking robot stands on the edge of a coin.
The tiny robotic structure was inspired by the Atlantic rock crab, also known as the peekytoe crab. The robot measures only half-millimeter in width. Among its walking capabilities, the crab-like system can crawl, bend, turn, twist, and jump at certain heights.
With the same program, the developers also created other tiny robots based on separate animals, including crickets, inchworms, and beetles, all having a size of not more than a couple of millimeters.
The initial phase of this innovation is still at work, but the authors believe that their technology would contribute to the wide array of robots today, particularly the world's smallest robots ever created. The experts also hope that these millimeter-sized machines would have their functions useful in practical tasks that require small-scale mechanisms and are conducted in tight, confined spaces.
In previous works, the same team created a separate robot that functions as a winged microchip. This innovation, called the 'microflier,' is the world's first smallest flying machine. The paper for this research was published in Nature, titled "Three-dimensional electronic microfliers inspired by wind-dispersed seeds."
Northwestern University's bioelectric and engineering specialist John Rogers, who served as the study's lead, explained in the institute's press release that the development of microscale robots is truly beneficial for other academic explorations.
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These microrobots could be utilized as agents for the repair and assembly of the small and internal structures of machines in the industry or even as medical assistants that could help in operations involving clogged arteries, internal bleeding, and even cancerous tumors.
Future of Tiny Robot Manufacturing
Northwestern's Department of Materials Science and Engineering specialist Yongang Huang, the leader of the development's theoretical phase, said that the technology their team produced could be controlled to perform various movements and have a displacement speed that measures half its whole body size per second.
The microscale crab robots were assembled with non-complex hydraulics, hardware, and electricity. The machines are powered with just the elastic resilience of their physical structure. The majority of its parts were equipped with a 'shape-memory' alloy material that could transform back to its initial form when exposed to heat.
The experts utilized a laser beam to heat the robot's various points in the study. When returning to its original shape, the alloy is assisted by a thin glass coating to maintain the shape while cooling.
Rogers said that the size of the robots, which is quite tinier than flies, actually helps the cooling process to become faster, allowing the machine to run faster. The team's approach to manufacturing these robots is expected to inspire other developments, including constructing robots of various shapes and sizes.
The study was published in Science Robotics, titled "Submillimeter-scale multimaterial terrestrial robots."
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