Why Scientist Are Making Robots The Size of Ants

in technology •  7 years ago 

Many of us are familiar with robots. But most robots are mostly big enough for us to notice them. How about making robots that may not even be noticeable at first glance that they are there? Enter Sarah Bergbreiler, a Ph.D. holder in electrical engineering at The University of California, Berkeley in the USA whose Ph.D. research was on design and fabrication of autonomous jumping micro-robots.




Source
Pretty small sized things can do a lot of incredible things. For instance, they can successfully carry some major part of a sliced bread by carting it away one crumb at a time.
(picture of ant carrying load here)

To successfully make robots that tiny, some major challenges.
Mobility mechanism in the legs and tiny motors to support mobility mechanism. Then there are sensors, power, and control. Also, group behavior of ants must be modeled and replicated on the robot. You must have witnessed thousands of ants working in sync. To replicate this in the tiny robot would take a lot of work.

Mobility: Insects have a high degree of stability in mobility. Cockroaches can move over the roughest terrain in the home climbing over a lot of things without tipping over. Cockroach's legs have both rigid and soft component to enable it to work and jump.

Jumping: Due to its small nature, insects can jump as a form of movement.

Replicating this on the robot, silicon is used for the hard component of the leg and the soft material for the leg is replicated with silicon rubber.



Source: Youtube
Jumping Mechanism


The motor that is being built to make this robot autonomous is 4mm in size is still a work in progress. But there is a functional 1cm2-sized robot that could move at the speed of 10cm/s. That is fast considering that is 10 times its body length.

Ultimately, the autonomous robot's size is 3mm and would house the power, actuator, sensor, and control.



Source: Youtube
Components of the tiny robot




Possible Application of Such a Tiny Robot

  1. Search and rescue: With cameras mounted on it could easily locate Victims of natural disaster trapped under rubbles. It could pass through cracks and crevices. Since it could run, jump and crawl through the rubbles effortlessly.

  2. Quality Control Test: A possible application in the field of structures. A multitude of the robots could be "unleashed" on a newly built bridge to check for cracks (structural integrity) etc to forestall the collapse of bridge like that of




Source: Minnesota USA 2007 Bridge Collapse

3. Biotech Engineering Application: Imagine a robot that could swim through blood and even the possibility of effecting a surgery without having to cut the patient open.

4. Improve Civil Engineering: This could change the way structures are built by emulating how ants successfully build anthills that are waterproof and safe from the force of nature.




Source: An anthill


There are still other possibilities of this tiny robot once it is commercially available.

Ref: 1,2

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

wow this is an extremely fascinating post! technology is growing so rapidly these days and its exciting to see how the world can change for the better. Thanks for sharing @greenrun definitely following and upvoting and resteem! wish you much success!

Thanks for the compliment, upvote and resteem. You rock.

Wow, i think i like the medical application of microbots, scientists are already working on microbots that can attack individual infected cells, like in cancer, the bots will drill through individual cancerous cell thereby eliminating them and sure we know that in just a matter of microseconds new cells will be created. But its still under development the last time i checked. Thanks so much for this i appreciate the research its keeping up to speed

That would even be a more bad ass bot. Ability to do a selective kill on infected cell? Wow.

Yes o, i wish them good success

Dear this your scientific posts na die. A fascinating piece and another Kudos to science and technology.

Science is out to help mankind solve a lot of problems. It is amazing to see the people creating all these devices to better make living a more fulfilling adventure. Thank you.

great article, i love robotics especially small scale

I love this too. Imagine the possibilities.

This will be great but will be faced with lot of challenges .

Makes me remember the movie "Ant man"

Yeah. I remember the movie. The possibility of such a robot in espionage would be very effective.

All the kids are doing robotics in school now. To them it will be second nature. Amazing what the possibilities are from civil engineering to medicine

Yes. It's a beginning.

Science and robotics? Great. As a physicist, i see the universe runny on AI very soon. Even the food we gonna be eating.

That's innovation in every sector of science and technology. Working on new ways to make a lot of things easier. There has been a tremendous advancement in that area.

You are right my friend. I hope to witness much more before i pass away.

great post. technology advancement always awes me and makes me worried too! Isn't too much of everything bad?

@cwen, not really, we need the technology to make a lot of things easier.

So we say!

You do not believe that?

There's is always a balance about everything on earth. We need to find that balance on the advancement of technology. Alot of harm may come out of it; well scientist may never know the harm till the new technology is deployed

@cwen, I'm always of the opinion in use of technology for good but most times, maybe due to portrayal of AI as evil by Hollywood SciFi movies, people are apprehensive of new technology as agents of change but would rather see it as something to be used in perpetration of evil.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I understand @cwen. Well humans made this bots for the good intentions what made you think that the fickled minded would not make negative bots.

Well I just hope they won't make the one that will specifically come to destroy the world and end it for Jesus.

@gloglo, I blame Hollywood for the irrational fear of AI :)

Swarm of such tiny micro robots can do many things including uses in war

I agree, they'd make for a perfect spy.

Also fire 🔥 ants 🐜

A tiny fire-spitting robot? Looks like stuff Hollywood SciFi is made of :)

He he ... I was thinking of the deadly fire ants. Ur imagination suits better

All good. Thanks

Very interesting. To have a bot do most things is very good to know. Well things are really working out. @sirwinchester made a post on AI and sophia has been certified as a citizen of saudi Arabia.

That is the most fascinating I've heard in a long time. I hope bots are not later manipulated for negative works.

That SOPHIA is just playing the script on its code.