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Researchers have created the world\u2019s smallest fully programmable, autonomous robots.<\/p>\n
These microscopic swimming machines can independently sense and respond to their surroundings, operate for months, and cost just a penny each.<\/p>\n
Barely visible to the naked eye, each robot measures about 0.2 by 0.3 by 0.05 millimeters, operating at the scale of many microorganisms. They can be programmed to move in complex patterns, sense local temperatures and adjust their paths in response.<\/p>\n
These light-powered robots, developed with primary support from the National Science Foundation, could advance medicine by monitoring the health of individual cells and aid manufacturing by helping construct microscale devices, the researchers say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve made autonomous robots 10,000 times smaller,\u201d says Marc Miskin, assistant professor in electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsyvlania and senior author of a pair of studies in Science Robotics<\/a> and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>. \u201cThat opens up an entirely new scale for programmable robots.\u201d<\/p>\n The robots can move in complex patterns and even travel in coordinated groups, much like a school of fish. And because their propulsion system has no moving parts, the robots are extremely durable\u2014easy to transfer with a micropipette and capable of swimming for months.<\/p>\n For decades, electronics have gotten smaller and smaller, epitomized by the record-setting sub-millimeter computers developed in the lab of David Blaauw and Dennis Sylvester, professors of electrical and computer engineering at UM. Yet robots have struggled to keep pace, in part because independent motion is exceptionally difficult for microscale devices\u2014a problem Miskin says has stalled the field for 40 years, until now.<\/p>\n \u201cWe saw that Penn Engineering\u2019s propulsion system and our tiny computers were just made for each other,\u201d says Blaauw, a senior author of the Science Robotics study.<\/p>\n