Meet the smallest ever remote-controlled walking robot | Science & Tech News
Engineers have unveiled the smallest remote-controlled walking robot ever created – even smaller than a flea.
The tiny robotic crab can “walk, bend, twist, turn and jump” according to engineers from Northwestern University in the US. It could signal the beginning of a new era of microscale robotics.
The little machine isn’t powered by miniaturized hardware and electronics, but instead by a shape-memory alloy material that transforms when it is heated.
How do they move?
The researchers use a scanned laser beam to rapidly heat the device at different locations across its body to make them transform and effectively force the robot to move.
One of the tricks the researchers used was covering the device in a thin coating of glass that forces that part of the robot’s structure to return to its deformed shape after it cools.
“Because these structures are so tiny, the rate of cooling is very fast. In fact, reducing the sizes of these robots allows them to run faster,” explained Professor John Rogers, who led the experimental research.
Part of the achievement was in the manufacturing process, which involves bonding flat precursors on to slightly stretched rubber – which forces the crabs to take on a 3D shape like a pop-up book.
The work remains exploratory and experimental, however.
Despite the comparable range of movement and size, the crab bot is much slower than a flea and has