Why Scientist Are Making Robots The Size of Ants

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