Microrobotics is a futuristic field dealing with the construction of extremely small actuators, sensors, support structures, computers, and robots. Let’s take a look at some of the best labs, their greatest accomplishments, and future plans.
1. Automation and Robotics Research Institute, University of Texas at Arlington
The research page summarizes their focus as follows:
“Much of AARI’s research revolves around smart micromachines which can emulate human functions, such as, perception, cognition, motion, communication, and interaction with the environment, humans, and among themselves.”
Their page includes a graphic that shows their three main focus areas: micromanufacturing, smart micromachines, and next-generation robotics. From the microrobotics page, their objective is stated as:
“Cost effective precision assembly of heterogeneous micro and nano systems. At high assembly yields, this technology is a viable alternative to monolithic fabrication. MEMS microrobots are also a viable top-down pathway to nanomanufacturing.
Two-prong approach based on:
* A meso-micro-nano assembly platform for MEMS millimeter to micron part sizes and nanometer tolerances. This platform uses microrobots built on a wafer.
* A micro-nano assembly system built using these microrobots.”
This is notable for mentioning nanomanufacturing by name. It also shows a commitment to aggressively pursue the microbots-that-build-microbots milestone. A microbot that could build another microbot using specially-supplied raw materials would be extremely useful. Because microbots are so small and require so little energy, they could be constructed in very large numbers if the process of their fabrication could be automated or streamlined. Research like this could eventually lead to microbots that can build other microbots just by using silicon or carbon from the ground.
Some of the innovative research directions or accomplishments at AARI include tiny windmills, vibration energy harvesters, in vivo medical micro-sensors, micropumps, microspectrometer, piezoactuators, mobile sensor networks, microrobotic-embedded textiles, 3D micromachine packaging, and more.
Definitely a lab to keep an eye on. Their research summary promises a lot, but will they be able to deliver? Only time will tell.
2. Donald Lab at Duke University
This lab is mainly famous for the tiny, 2D microbot pictured above, created by the facility’s namesake, Bruce Donald, and co-workers. According to the site, the microbot has “dimensions of 60 µm by 250 µm by 10 µm. This micro-robot is 1 to 2 orders of magnitude smaller in size than previous micro-robotic systems. The device consists of a curved, cantilevered steering arm, mounted on an untethered scratch drive actuator. These two components are fabricated monolithically from the same sheet of conductive polysilicon, and receive a common power and control signal through a capacitive coupling with an underlying electrical grid.”
Pretty nifty! This is about as small as true robots have gotten so far, just a few hundred times the volume of a typical red blood cell. A flea could accidentally step on this thing and crush it! More info on Dr. Donald’s microbot:
“He likens it to a car, because it’s controllable: “You can steer it anywhere on a flat surface, and drive it wherever you want to go.” Unlike previous attempts at such a microelectromechanical system, Donald’s robot has no tether, but operates via electrical charges on a silicon grid. It’s a real speed demon, proceeding in nano-sized hops (one billionth of a meter, 20,000 times per second), ultimately achieving two millimeters per second, or the equivalent on a more human scale of 80 kilometers per hour. To the tunes of a Strauss waltz, Donald demonstrates two robots dancing in straight and wavy lines around each other, and then coupling to form a single system.”
On the research page for microrobotics we see this summary:
“The goal of this research is to build microsystems that can actively, accurately, and efficiently interact and change the physical world. While so far MEMS research has been biased more towards sensor technology, there are a large number of potential applications that require micro actuators. Important examples are techniques to efficiently move, sort, or mix small particles (e.g. cells in biotechnology applications); or micro positioning devices for inspection and assembly of complex micro systems (e.g. for display or amplifier arrays).”
Numerous papers and preprints are available at the site. Also interesting is a paper that includes a design for artificial flagella. Microrobotics researchers are progressively creating artificial systems that match all the capacities of a bacterium. After that is done, creating artificial eukaryote-like cells will be next.
All in all, looks like a great lab, although the web page needs to do better to portray all the research that is being done in the papers. Press coverage is available here, it mostly focuses on the aforementioned micro-bot. This microbot was an amazing accomplishment, can’t wait to see the follow-ups.
3. Harvard Microrobotics Lab
From the home page:
“Our research focuses on all aspects of mobile microrobot design, fabrication, control, and analysis. Expertise in microfabrication and microsystem design combined with insights from nature enable us to create high-performance microrobots for aerial, terrestrial, and aquatic environments. Such systems can be used for search and rescue, hazardous environment exploration, environmental monitoring, and reconnaissance.”
This lab created a splash last summer when they launched their 60-mg fly microrobot with a wingspan of about an inch. As far as I know, this is the smallest flying machine built by man. I wouldn’t be surprised if these were deployed offensively in warfare as early as 2015. Imagine one equipped with a tiny hypodermic needle and a microgram of botulism toxin, enough to kill about a hundred humans. What if you could assassinate a political figure with one of these and never be caught? It would change geopolitics entirely.
The research overview points to three research areas: biomimetic mobile microrobots, control for autonomous robots and emergent swarm behaviors, and smart materials, microactuators, and soft robotics. Breaking it down, these include the fly robot, tiny walker robots based on arthropods, an aquatic robot based on minnows, micro air vehicles for inside use, operant conditioning for teaching complex behaviors, swarm robotics, artificial muscles, morphable mobile robots, self-reconfigurable robotics and objects, and novel sensor suites.
This lab is distinct for pursuing all three major types of locomotion: swimming, walking, and flying. For microrobotics, copying the design of nature is a great idea: fairyflies, for example, are wasps with a diameter in the neighborhood of 140 microns, over a hundred times smaller than the fly bot. It may be a while before we create flying robots so small that they’re invisible, but if this research continues, it will only be a matter of time.
4. Nanorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon
This lab actually calls itself a nanorobotics lab rather than a microrobotics lab, although it’s basically the same thing as the others. Various interesting projects are being explored here, including gecko-inspired wall-climbing robots, lizard-inspired water-running robot, water strider robot, magnetically actuated micro-robots, microscopic swimming robots, and endoscopic micro-capsules for medical uses.
It almost seems like this lab and the Harvard Lab are trying not to walk on each other’s toes, because they are collectively trying to reproduce most forms of animal locomotion in their microbot research, while not working on what the other is. If you put their robots together, they’d be invincible — flying, crawling, walking, water-striding, wall-climbing, and swimming! All they need next is the burrowing microbot.
My favorite is the swimming robot. It exploits the motility of bacterial flagella by attaching a small colony of them to the back of a submarine-shaped microbot. This circumvents the usual challenge of trying to separate the flagella from the bacteria before using it. The motor even includes an off-on switch, which uses copper ions to stop the motor, and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) to resume it. The possible applications are listed as delivering drugs to hard-to-reach, specific areas of the human body and aiding in diagnosis. Eventually, robots like this might also be helpful for nanomedicine style surgery, such as removing fat cells or reinforcing muscle fibers. Maybe, at an advanced stage, they could even add in new brain cells, providing a path to human intelligence enhancement.
5. Biomimetic Millisystems Lab at Berkeley
This lab describes its research goal as follows:
“The goal of the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab is to harness features of animal manipulation, locomotion, sensing, actuation, mechanics, dynamics, and control strategies to radically improve millirobot capabilities. Research in the lab ranges from fundamental understanding of mechanical principles to novel fabrication techniques to system integration of autonomous millirobots. The lab works closely with biologists to develop models of function which can be tested on engineered and natural systems. The lab’s current research is centered on fly-size flapping flight, and all-terrain crawling using nanostructured adhesives.”
Another microrobotics lab, another name for the same thing. This Berkeley lab works on some of the same projects as the others, including a fly microbot weighing less than 100 milligrams and with a wingspan of an inch, self-cleaning synthetic gecko-adhesives (check out some of the images on that page), and microassembly (microbots building each other again).
What really makes the Berkeley lab stand out from the others is their attempt to develop a desktop rapid prototyping toolkit for under $1000 to build microbots from composite fiber. Besides making microbots available to anyone, a desktop prototype machine would help with the automated assembly of microscale parts, something currently laborious. The system has already been used to fabricate several simple microstructures, including a microscale wrist and 4-bar mechanism. Soon: microbots for the people!
That concludes my summary. If you want to read further interesting futurist articles and discussion, subscribe to the feed.
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