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Microrobots Walk Autonomously

Cornell researchers installed electronic “brains” on tiny solar-powered robots, so they were able to walk autonomously sans external control.

“Before, we literally had to manipulate these ‘strings’ in order to get any kind of response from the robot,” said Itai Cohen  , professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. “But now that we have these brains on board, it’s like taking the strings off the marionette. It’s like when Pinocchio gains consciousness.”

Topics:
Automation Motion Control Robotics

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: This is part of a broader effort at Cornell to construct intelligent micro-scale systems that are responsive and can manipulate their environment. Our lab already set the world record for the world's smallest walking robot, but the nice thing about the work that you'll hear about from Michael ... is that we've now integrated those robots with a brain. SPEAKER 2: So the robots that I work on basically are smaller than you can see by your naked eye. That's like a 100 microns-ish in size, about the width of a human hair. And these robots are unique in that they have a circuit on board that controls the robot.

    00:00:36 So previous to the work that we're doing, basically, if you wanted to build a robot that small, you had to control it externally. It was more like a marionette. And the big advance that we've been able to make is basically putting circuitry on board that kind of cuts the string and lets this be a 'real boy,' so to speak. A robot that can move autonomously. TEXT: The 'brain' is a compelementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) clock circuit which is powered by photovoltaics. TEXT: This carefully designed system prompts the microrobots to walk autonomously when exposed to light. SPEAKER 2: It's really hard to integrate a circuit with these legs on a really small scale.

    00:01:16 And so there was a bunch of work which collaborators to design circuits with all the right parameters, to let you etch them out and add legs to them ... and, ultimately, you can release that robot and have it walk away at the end of the process. SPEAKER 1: What's amazing is that each one of these technological advancements has really opened up a whole new branch that we're getting excited about. We've already started to think about sheet like robots that have intelligence that's distributed throughout the material. We're trying to think about having electronic circuits that can learn on their own using machine learning techniques. It's really fantastic.

    00:01:49 The technology is exploding and we're really excited about the future. We're we're very excited about the future of these kinds of microsystems that's maybe distributed over multiple robots or multiple integrated circuits on a single sheet like robot. We're interested in making technologies that, you know, take advantage of these cilia that we've designed and built and and commercializing them. So I think there's a whole range of interesting areas that we're going into. It's really fantastic.

    00:18:19 The technology is exploding and we're really excited about the future. This all started here and this all was homegrown here at Cornell. And some of these are already you know, we you know, Paul and his previous grad student, Alejandro Cortez, they're already started a company based on sensing. And so these are very tiny distributed sensors that you can basically have anywhere. And you shine your phone on it and it tells you what that object is.

    00:19:15 It's.