New Smallest Robot Coming?

Posted 19 Jul 2003 at 18:06 UTC by The Swirling Brain

Small Times says that a couple of California firms received a patent for micromanipulators which could pave the way for the smallest robots capable of manipulating large molecules and cells. Technology Innovations and Innovation On Demand, Inc. received the patent "Wireless Techniques for Microactivation" which uses focused directed energy beams for controlling tiny Nitinol wire microactuators. It sounds like the microactuators are controlled from an external energy source so the robots wouldn't be self contained, but tiny nano robots could become a reality.

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Yeah but does it work yet?, posted 21 Jul 2003 at 19:41 UTC by earlwb » (Master)

Sandia always seems to be all the news but these guys at

http://diwww.epfl.ch/lami/mirobots/smoovy.html

built several 1cc robots that solve mazes in the 1cc mouse maze class in Japan. Sandia's robots do nothing but run down batteries. They don't even appear to have any sensors actually.

Then these guys were actually manufacturing in limited production

http://dmtwww.epfl.ch/isr/asl/projects/alice_pj.html

some really neat 1/2" sized soccer team robots and sets. So you could play soccer in a opened briefcase sized soccer field. That's really cool.