Boffins fire up wireless micro robots

A team of researchers has unveiled details of a project to develop wireless microscopic robots for functions including cell manipulation and assembly of minuscule structures.

The Micron project, led by the Institute of Process Control and Robotics (IPCR) in Karlsruhe, Germany, is working with eight international partners.

Funded under the Future and Emerging Technologies initiative of the European Commission's Information Society Technologies programme, Micron set out to build the robots which are just cubic centimetres in size. 

"Each one would measure about 1.5cm by 3cm, and are designed to be complete robots with different kinds of actuators for gripping, cell manipulation and so on," said IPCR's Joerg Seyfried.

"Each one would be wireless, with lots of electronics on board, and an infrared control system rather like a TV remote, but two-way in this case. They would be able to cooperate on a range of tasks."

Building the robots involved developing many customised applications, according to Seyfried.

"One of these was the wireless powering system, or 'power floor', which allows the robot to get energy from its surroundings," he explained. "It uses a coil system to transmit the electricity through the air."

The robots were also designed as part of a networked system. "The individual robots are not that intelligent," said Seyfried.

"They don't, for example, know where they are, although they know which direction they are moving. We developed a special positioning system so that we know where each robot is.

"It views them from 40 to 50cm above. They are controlled by a central robot control system, with several networked computers for planning and commands. This could theoretically control many robots."

According to the scientists, the hardest part of the project was getting the hardware integrated and running.

"Our goal was to have five robots operational, but this could not be done in our three-year timeframe owing to the extreme complexity of the task," said Seyfried.

Nevertheless, the one fully functional robot that the project did achieve could be tested in three different scenarios, according to Seyfried.

"The first was a medical or biological application, in which the robot was handling biological cells and injecting liquid into them," he said.

"The second was micro-assembly, in which the robot soldered tiny parts. The final scenario looked at atomic force, with the robot mounting atomic force and doing experiments on it.

"Our experiments showed that the cell injection is entirely feasible, as is the micro soldering."

Although the Micron robots are clearly not a mass market product, Seyfried believes that commercialisation is perfectly possible.

"Robots with this sort of capability and mobility would be perfectly suited to lab work, such as the micro assembly of prototypes," he said. "Tasks such as cell injection could be performed on a mass scale."