Microbots Tango On A Pinhead
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 6 of June , 2008 at 12:01 am
If you thought these bots were small, Duke University’s microbots are smaller. Much smaller. Measured in microns (that’s millionths of a meter), they’re 100 times smaller than any similar design at 250 microns long, 60 microns wide, and 10 microns high. The floor that the robots are dancing around in the above video is a mere millimeter across.
The tricky part (one of the tricky parts) about robots this small is getting them to do what you want them to do. These microbots move forward in tiny (10 billionths of a meter) but quick (20,000 per second) little steps in response to electrical impulses applied to the surface they’re located on. To turn, a different signal pulls one end of the bot to the surface, creating a pivot point. By slightly altering the way each bot responds to the “turn” signal, a bunch of them can be controlled at the same time, and fancy math can get the group to respond in specific ways.
Look for these bots microbots to be showing up probably a long time from now in a brain cell near you.
[ Duke University ] VIA [ Engadget ]
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