While it won’t take a $4-million microscope to see these solar-powered microscopic robots, they definitely require less power to run. Cornell University researchers have created micro-robots capable of walking autonomously using only the power of the sun without external control, thanks to an onboard digital control or CMOS clock circuit.
These micro-robots not only have a high degree of programmability, but they are also integrated with both actuators and sensors. The goals is to one day use this in medicine as something that could move around safely in human tissue and target only bad cells. Environmentally, this type of robot would be able to break down pollutants and sense dangerous chemicals.
One of the key parts that enables this is that we’re using microscale actuators that can be controlled by low voltages and currents. This is really the first time that we showed that yes, you can integrate that directly into a CMOS process and have all of those legs be directly controlled by effectively one circuit,” said Alejandro Cortese, CEO of OWiC Technologies.
