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TheLike Frankenstein, Marc Miskin's robots are initially motionless. Then their members jerk to life.
But these robots are about the size of a grain of dust. Thousands of people are seated side by side on a single silicon wafer similar to that used for computer chips and, like Frankenstein, they are freeing themselves and crawling.
"We can take your favorite electronic silicon component, put it on the ground and build a million," said Dr. Miskin, professor of electrical engineering and systems at the University of Pennsylvania. "It's the vision."
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He imagines a multitude of uses for these microbots, which are roughly the size of a cell. They could crawl into cell phone batteries, clean them up and regenerate them. They could be a boon for neural scientists, digging into the brain to measure nerve signals. Millions of them in a petri dish could be used to test ideas about networking and communication.
The research, presented at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Boston in March, is the final step in the vision The physicist Richard Feynman exhibited in 1959, in a conference entitled "There is a lot of room at the bottom", on how information could be integrated into structures at the atomic scale and molecular machines. could transform the technology.
Over the past 50 years, Feynman's predictions about information storage have largely materialized. "But the second goal – the miniaturization of machines – we are just starting," said Dr. Miskin.
New robots benefit from the same basic technology as computer chips. "What we are doing is stealing 60 years of silicon," said Paul McEuen, a physicist at Cornell University. "It does not matter to have a 100 micron silicon chip on one side. What did not exist was essentially the exoskeleton of the robot's arms, the actuators. "
While working in Dr. McEuen's lab, Dr. Miskin developed a technique for depositing platinum and titanium layers on a silicon wafer. When an electrical voltage is applied, the platinum contracts while the titanium remains rigid and the flat surface bends. Bending has become the motor that moves the robot members, each a hundred atoms thick.
The idea is not new. Researchers such as Kris Pister, from the University of California at Berkeley, have been talking for decades about "smart dust," tiny sensors that can signal environmental conditions. But in the development of practical versions, intelligent dust has become bigger, more like a smart gravel stone, to hold in batteries.
Dr. Miskin solved the problem of energy by leaving out the batteries. Instead, he feeds the robots by shining lasers on tiny solar panels on his back.
"I think it's really great," said Dr. Pister about the work of Dr. Miskin, Dr. McEuen, and their collaborators. "They created a very small robot that you can control by illuminating the light and that could have all kinds of interesting applications."
Since robots are made using conventional silicon technology, the integration of sensors to measure temperature or electrical impulses must be simple.
Mr. Miskin said his fellow electrical engineering engineers are often incredulous when they discover that the robots operate with a fraction of a volt and consume only 10 billionths of a watt: "Yes, absolutely." ; "And then you can drive it, calculate it and do all that stuff?" People are really excited. "
The challenges remain. For robots injected into the brain, lasers would not work as a source of energy. (Dr. Miskin said that magnetic fields could be an alternative.) He wants to swim other robots rather than crawl. (For small machines, swimming can be difficult because the water becomes viscous, like honey).
Mr Miskin nevertheless hopes to be able to demonstrate practical microbots within a few years.
"It really comes down to how much innovation you have to do?", He said. "And what I like in this project is a lot of functional things, the answer is no. You take the parts that exist and you assemble them.
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