Computers aren't the only ones shrinking and shrivelling. Thanks to mobile phones, which once only sat on desktops… 'smaller' has been used synonymously for 'better.' This resulted in Microbots or Micro-robots, the AI with microscopic sensors with tinier legs, stampeded right out of Hollywood screens which could someday help fix our cell phone battery or study our brain.
We can expect medical robots to map our unique physiologies, clean the plaque out of arteries, and destroy kidney stones. They'll help diagnose and combat diseases and be accustomed to fight cancer. They will monitor and perhaps even repair machinery and infrastructure. A book (a thick one) may be written to predict microbotics' advantages, but what about where this tech could get it wrong or be misused? Another book in size to the first one can be written on that subject.
But why size down? Because if I were to picture futuristic bots which may revolutionize micro-robotics and medicine, a Pop-Tart with four squiggly legs wouldn't air top of my list, nor does it make it bearable by being effortless to manage and produce.
Although "microbots" conjures up mental pictures of 'cool, high-end' technologically advanced, beyond comprehension machinery that may be mind-manipulated like in Hollywood, we got a military of Pop-Tarts.
Dr. Marc Miskin, Dr. Itai Cohen, and Dr. Paul McEuen at Cornell university spearheaded a collaboration that tackled one of the foremost pressing problems in micro-robotics—how to get those robots to maneuver in a controllable manner because obviously, mini-robots running unchecked in our skin would be dead-last on your Christmas list. Thus, they graced us with a troop of Pop-Tart-shaped microbots with earnestly tricked-out actuators or motors that allow a robot to maneuver.
Not a fan of Frankenstein? Then Miskin's bots will plague your nightmares: Here's why, like Frankenstein, Marc Miskin's robots initially lie motionless before their limbs jerk to life. But these robots are the dimensions of a speck of dust. Thousands fit side-by-side on one silicon wafer similar to those used for computer chips, and, like Frankenstein coming to life, they pull themselves free and start crawling. "We can take your favorite piece of silicon electronics, put legs thereon, then build 1,000,000 of them," said Dr. Miskin, an electrical and systems engineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "That's the vision."
The new robots exploit the identical basic technology as computer chips. "What we're doing is stealing from 60 years of silicon," said Paul McEuen. "It's no big deal to make a semiconductor 100 microns on a side. What didn't exist is the exoskeleton for the robot arms, the actuators." While working within the laboratories of Dr. McEuen and Itai Cohen, Dr. Miskin developed the most superficial way (computer chip printing technology called lithography) to sandwich layers of platinum and titanium on a silicon wafer. When an electrical voltage is applied, the platinum contracts while the titanium remains rigid and, therefore, the flat surface arcs. The bending becomes the motor that moves the robots' limbs. So, these things are dead one moment and the next they are shocked to life literally like Frankenstein, but having a mindless monster under your authority does have its perks, like the control is so accurate that the team could simultaneously jigger the legs of a battalion of microbots in an exceedingly coordinated "march".
"I think it's really cool," Dr. Pister said of the work by Dr. Miskin, Dr. McEuen, and their collaborators. "They made a super-small robot you'll be able to control by shining lasers on small solar panels on their backs, which could have all forms of interesting applications." Because the robots are made using conventional silicon technology, incorporating sensors to live temperature or electrical pulses should be straightforward.
Dr. Miskin said his tech colleagues are often skeptical after they determine that the robots run on a fraction of a volt and consume only ten billionths of a watt.
Yes, they're quite remarkable; but do realize they were designed to crawl through human bodies in the first place.
Their primordial function is to patrol the physique and mainly study another complex piece of machinery, the brain. This design was inspired by nature's very own creepers that crawl through every nook and cranny simply because of the convenience of their size, which involves a drawback: For robots injected into the brain, lasers wouldn't work due to the facility source (Dr. Miskin said magnetic fields could be another). He wanted to create other robots to swim rather than crawl. (For tiny machines, swimming is arduous as water becomes viscous, like honey.) Still, Dr. Miskin expects that he can demonstrate practical microbots within some years. “It really boils down to how much innovation you have to do?” he said.
The robots' "brains" are conventional and support classical electronic circuits; it also means they will be more easily integrated with existing logic circuits to engineer even "smarter" next generations that answer more complex commands. "[The authors] have used a fresh design concept for his or her microrobots," wrote Drs. Allan Brooks and Michael Strano at MIT in an accompanying piece of the paper. "Because the actuators will be operated by the low-power electric currents that typically flow through electronic circuits, sensors and logic components may be seamlessly integrated with the actuators." This opens the doors for the last 50 years of microelectronics research to be incorporated into robots so small the human eye can't see them."
Why Microbots?
Robotics, the imploding field, has captured our imaginations for long, especially the small ones, which threatened to revolutionize the medical field and make a permanent amalgamation between the two.
In the sixties, Hollywood and famed physicist Dr. Richard Phillips Feynman imagined teams of "swallowable surgeons" (not edible people) roaming the body and performing demanding surgeries. As micro- and nano-fabrication techniques matured over the past decades, the goal of creating biocompatible cell-sized robots that patrol our bodies seems less like a fantasy and more sort of a scientific inevitability. That is, with some serious challenges along the way.
Scientists have designed microbots that answer light, sound, magnetism, temperature, or chemical controllers to resolve the locomotion problem. It's basically like saying if you cannot maneuver a motorcar through gravel, make me one which will.
Taking inspiration from the parasites that have been prevailing on us for hundreds of years, there are already tiny worm-like robots that may walk, jump, roll, or perhaps swim using magnets to manage their movement across the rugged landscape of human tissue. These design ideas, albeit innovative and intelligent, construct the robot's command center or "brain" from the bottom up. Instead, why not take inspiration from the design of the microelectronics gate boards that have long powered our computers and phones?
If you thought they only crawl, you're wrong; they fly too.
Inspired by the biology of a bee, researchers at the Wyss Institute are developing RoboBees, artificial systems that might perform myriad roles in agriculture or disaster relief. The masterminding of the RoboBee was motivated by the thought of developing autonomous micro-aerial vehicles capable of self-contained, self-directed flight and achieving coordinated behavior in large groups.
Ten years from now, when you buy your new iPhone, it may come with a little jar with a few thousand tiny robots in it that you can control by an app on your cell phone. If you want to ride a paramecium, go for it! If you want to DJ the world's smallest robot dance party, make it happen. Microbots are on their way! Are you ready to participate in this revolution?
Check out these videos to see how these creepers crawl and, in some cases, even fly https://youtu.be/xK54Bu9HFRw https://youtu.be/3me68t6Kh0I
