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PHILADELPHIA – Over at the University of Pennsylvania<\/a>, research is being done to change the medical world<\/a> as we know it.<\/p>\n Penn Engineering<\/a> researchers there are developing what they\u2019ve coined as the world\u2019s smallest autonomous robots, tinier than a grain of salt. The micro robot looks like a black speck with the eye, but sensors and a computer are all packed inside.<\/p>\n What they’re saying:<\/p>\n Marc Miskin, assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering at UPenn, said they\u2019ve been interested in microscopic robots since about 2016, and they\u2019ve been building them smarter every couple years.<\/p>\n “First one was to build something that could kind of walk around and something that could walk around on its own,” said Miskin. “And the robot we\u2019re talking about today is a robot that can also make decisions and choose what it wants to do based on what it sees in the world around it.”<\/p>\n The robot as it is today has three main parts: a sensor, a computer and a way to act or move around.<\/p>\n “This is sort of the first robot to incorporate all three of those things into a very tiny package,” said Miskin.<\/p>\n What we know:<\/p>\n Since the robot is so small, physics is able to help out in a big way.<\/p>\n “The way it works is, the robot creates an electric field in water around it, and the field causes particles in the water to move,” said Miskin. “When they move, it creates a flow and that flow pushes on the robot.”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/upenn-engineering-tiny-robots.jpg\")
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