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Robots smaller than a grain of salt? It sounds like science fiction, but Researchers have Development of small autonomous robots They can move through fluids, sense their environment, and operate autonomously using only light as an energy source.
The microrobots, developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, measure about 200 x 300 x 50 micrometers. However, it can detect temperature changes, follow programmed paths, and operate autonomously for months at a time.
Their work was published this week in two scientific journals, Science Robotics and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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“We have created autonomous robots that are 10,000 times smaller,” senior author Mark Miskin, an assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a statement. “This opens up a whole new scope for programmable robots.”
The robots are powered entirely by light, and do not move using mechanical limbs. Instead, they generate small electric fields that push ions (electrically charged particles) in the fluid to create motion, an approach better suited to the unique physics of the microscopic world, where traditional actuators do not work.
Unlike previous microbots, these devices combine sensing, computing, decision-making and locomotion into a single self-contained system on a very small scale.
Previous efforts in microrobotics have often relied on external controls, such as magnetic fields or physical tethers, to guide movement. However, these new tiny robots include their own microprocessors powered by solar cells, allowing them to respond to their environment, communicate through patterned movements visible under a microscope and carry out tasks without external guidance.
Potential applications include monitoring biological processes at the cellular level, supporting medical diagnostics, or helping to assemble small devices. Because each robot can be mass-produced at a very low cost, this technology opens up new avenues for research and engineering at previously inaccessible levels.