[ExI] An Army of Microscopic Robots Is Ready to Patrol Your Body

[John Grigg]

"If I were to picture futuristic bots that could revolutionize both
microrobotics and medicine, a Pop-Tart with four squiggly legs would not be
on top of my list.

I was so wrong.

Last week, Drs. Marc Miskin*, Itai Cohen, and Paul McEuen at Cornell
University spearheaded a collaboration
<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2626-9> that tackled one of the
most pressing problems in microrobotics—getting those robots to move in a
controllable manner. They graced us with an army of Pop-Tart-shaped
microbots with seriously tricked-out actuators, or motors that allow a
robot to move. In this case, the actuators make up the robot’s legs.

Each smaller than the width of a human hair, the bots have a blocky body
equipped with solar cells and two pairs of platinum legs, which can be
independently triggered to flex using precise laser zaps. The control is so
accurate that the team was able to simultaneously jigger the legs of a
battalion of microbots in a coordinated “march.”

If you’re not impressed yet, there’s more: unlike previous microbots that
relied on magnetism to move, these are basically miniaturized robots. Like
BigDog <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigDog>, they have mechanical legs
that are controlled with silicon-based electronic components. This means
that it’s possible to manufacture the bots en masse using decades of
nanofabrication experience, similar to how we currently make computer chips
<https://singularityhub.com/2020/08/23/moores-law-lives-intel-says-chips-will-pack-50-times-more-transistors/>
.

Because the robots’ “brains” are conventional and based on classical
electronic circuits, it also means that they can be more easily integrated
with existing logic circuits to engineer even “smarter” next generations
that respond to more complex commands.

“[The authors] have used a fresh design concept for their microrobots,”
wrote <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02421-2> Drs. Allan
Brooks and Michael Strano at MIT in an accompanying piece of the paper.
“Because the actuators can be operated by the low-power electric currents
that typically flow through electronic circuits, sensors and logic
components could be seamlessly integrated with the actuators …This opens
the doors for the last 50 years of micro-electronics research to be
incorporated into robots <https://singularityhub.com/tag/robotics/> so
small they can’t be seen by the human eye.”"

[image: nano robo.jpg]
I look forward to hearing a comment about this development by Eric
Drexler...

https://singularityhub.com/2020/09/08/an-army-of-microscopic-robots-is-ready-to-patrol-your-body/
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