dartmouth micro-robots = 250 microns

The folks over at Dartmouth College have been busy making micro-robots 250 microns long and 10 microns high. Here's a snippet:

"These Micro-Robots are one tenth the thickness of human hair, about as wide as a hair, and shorter than the sharp point of a thumb tack, yet they can be remotely controlled to navigate anywhere on a surface. Integrated in this small package are a wireless power and control signal receiver, walking actuator, steering actuator, and on-board state memory."

"An interdiscplinary team of engineers and computer scientists at Dartmouth have made the world's smallest untethered mobile robots. These robots can be remote controlled to walk anywhere on a special surface. The robots move forward with an inch-worm like gait, bending one step at a time. They turn by snapping down a foot on the end of a steering arm; motion then pivots arount the fixed foot. An operator can control forward motion and turning with a sequence of commands through a wireless tramsmission that also powers the motion. "

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Here's the feature list:

- 60x250x10 micro-meter robot made of polycrystaline silicon and chromium
- Utilizes surface micromachining (MEMS) with stress engineering to produce out-of-plane curl.

- 12nm average step size.
- Operation demonstrated at 16kHz (not an intrinsic speed limit).
- Teleoperation alows motion anywhere on a plane.
- Moves on an insulated substrate with submerged interdigitated electrodes.
- Control is one-wire (plus ground) with four level logic.
- Monolithic fabrication from poly-silicon includes:
-on-board power & control signal pickup
-decoding & state memory
-locomotion & turning

- Two gaits:
-forward walking: MEMS Scratch Drive propulsion only
-turning: Propulsion and Turning Arm both deployed.

And here's some links to the videos:

Movie of robot tracing a Dartmouth "D". In this movie, the dots and text are overlays added to the video after the fact. The underlying video of the robot motion is unedited except that it is shown twice actual speed. The curved portion utilizes both turning and straight motion gaits.

Movie of robot looping corners of a square. Shown twice actual speed.

Additional video archived at Dartmouth Technical Report 553

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