Engineers at Northwestern University have created a remote-controlled robot that can bend, twist, crawl, walk, turn, and jump and is only half a millimetre wide. Furthermore, the crab-shaped robot accomplishes this feat without the need for actuators, motors, hydraulics, or power. Lasers are used to control the world’s smallest remote-controlled robot.
The developers used a special shape-memory alloy that, when heated, turns into a specific shape in its “memory.” The findings were reported in the journal Science Robotics in an article titled “Submillimeter-scale multimaterial terrestrial robots.”
“Those joints begin in a bent position, similar to a bent knee.” “When we locally heat that shape memory alloy at that junction, it will spontaneously shift to recover that initial flat planar geometry,” experiment leader John Rogers told the press via video conference. At Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, Rogers is the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurological Surgery.
“The difficulty is figuring out how to get it to return to its original shape.” We do this by applying a tiny layer of glass to the limb. “When the metal cools to a normal temperature, the elastic resilience of the thin glass layer causes it to bend back to its original bent shape,” Rogers added.
The researchers use a focused laser beam to deliver localised heat in a specific order to distinct components of the tiny robot. Because of the alloy’s characteristics and the robot’s small size, each “limb” cools down extremely quickly after heat is removed. The robot moves in a specific way based on the sequence in which the laser is administered, as the shape of individual limbs varies due to this heating and cooling.
The crab was created by fabricating an initial structure with a flat shape and then bonding it to a slightly stretched sheet of extremely thin glass. When the stretched layer relaxes, a controlled buckling occurs, forming the structure into the desired three-dimensional shape.
In addition, the researcher designed robots that were influenced by other species such as inchworms and grasshoppers. The researchers now intend to develop robots that can do a variety of activities.
“The robots must be capable of more than just moving around.” These robots could be used in diagnostic and surgical procedures in the future. For instance, to clear plaque from congested arteries or something similar. However, such small robots could have a variety of non-surgical and non-medical applications, according to Rogers.
The researchers are also looking for ways to “connect with the robot in a more meaningful way.” The focused laser beam can currently be regarded as a means of communication with the robot. It can be used to control the robot in a variety of ways, such as causing it to walk in different directions and at varied rates. The capacity to “hear back” from the robot would be even more advantageous. However, this would necessitate the integration of complicated sensors as well as wireless communication components.
According to Rogers, the manufacturing procedures used to manufacture these robots, however, are comparable to those utilised in the integrated circuits sector. This implies that in the future, other types of electronic circuits and radios could be built directly into the bodies of robots.
If and when that happens, Rogers predicts a swarm of these gadgets working together to execute complex tasks, communicating with each other and with the operator.