Posted on 09/16/2005 11:54:36 AM PDT by sourcery
In a world where "supersize" has entered the lexicon, there are some things getting smaller, like cell phones and laptops. Dartmouth researchers have contributed to the miniaturizing trend by creating the world's smallest untethered, controllable robot. Their extremely tiny machine is about as wide as a strand of human hair, and half the length of the period at the end of this sentence. About 200 of these could march in a line across the top of a plain M&M.
The researchers, led by Bruce Donald, the Joan P. and Edward J. Foley Jr. 1933 Professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth, report their creation in a paper that will be presented at the 12th International Symposium of Robotics Research in October in San Francisco, which is sponsored by the International Federation of Robotics Research. A longer, more detailed paper about this microrobot will also appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, a publication of the IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
"It's tens of times smaller in length, and thousands of times smaller in mass than previous untethered microrobots that are controllable," says Donald. "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."
The future applications for micro-electromechanical systems, or MEMS, include ensuring information security, such as assisting with network authentication and authorization; inspecting and making repairs to an integrated circuit; exploring hazardous environments, perhaps after a hazardous chemical explosion; or involving biotechnology, say to manipulate cells or tissues.
Donald worked with Christopher Levey, Assistant Professor of Engineering and the Director of the Microengineering Laboratory at Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth Ph.D. students Craig McGray and Igor Paprotny, and Daniela Rus, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Their paper describes a machine that measures 60 micrometers by 250 micrometers (one micrometer is one thousandth of a millimeter). It integrates power delivery, locomotion, communication, and a controllable steering system - the combination of which has never been achieved before in a machine this small. Donald explains that this discovery ushers in a new generation of even tinier microrobots.
McGray, who earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science working on this project in Donald's lab, adds, "Machines this small tend to stick to everything they touch, the way the sand sticks to your feet after a day at the beach. 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." McGray is currently a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md.
The prototype is steerable and untethered, meaning that it can move freely on a surface without the wires or rails that constrained the motion of previously developed microrobots. Donald explains that this is the smallest robot that transduces force, is untethered, and is engaged in its own locomotion. The robot contains two independent microactuators, one for forward motion and one for turning. It's not pre-programmed to move; it is teleoperated, powered by the grid of electrodes it walks on. The charge in the electrodes not only provides power, it also supplies the robot's instructions that allow it to move freely over the electrodes, unattached to them.
The work was funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Domestic Preparedness through Dartmouth's Institute for Security Technology Studies (ISTS).
ping
ping
At very small scales, so am I.
Fascinating. Bump for later reading.
Yeah, but it sucks as far as legroom goes...
Something that small might be able to travel to outer space on its own, and then go someplace, the moon or an asteroid, and then start terraforming or mining. It's all in the programming.
That explains the voices that I hear. It's really those little robots with loudspeakers.
Nope, it's all in the special, micro-addressable substrate on which it moves. It has no capability of moving through free space.
It may not be "tethered", but it is confined to the equivalent of two-dimensional "rails"...
Can't help but wonder just how large that patterned substrate really is. I would be surprised to learn that it is larger than one cm square.
Small stuff can be buoyant and tend to higher elevations if the wind is right. Probably 20 miles is the maximum that could be expected from buoyancy and then another mechanism would need to kick in. It would take a while for a microbot to gain enough speed to arrive at orbit. In the meantime it would have to float. Whether atmospheric drag can be overcome this way might be an interesting exercise for an enterprising aeronautical engineering student. I don't know, but it seems like there might be a way.
Once again the 'Pubs show the way, and according to the picture it's "Eyes Right!!!"
The value of these little things are not to send them out into space. They offer no advantage for that. Size is not the limitation in space travel. Their advantage is to have them perform tasks within a larger body, a mechanical or human body.
True. However, we need a way to get out into space at low or zero cost.
Not really. That’s not the bottle neck. No sense imposing the limitations intrinsic to micobots in order to have hope that some escape into space.
Hams, RC airplane hobbyists, others who like to build things should wonder why they can't get their creations into space just by going out into the yard and letting them go. No muss, no fuss, no smoke and fire, just up and away.
Well it worked in Preview mode :(
I see the picture just fine.
So, what is that?
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