Engineers in the US have created a remote-controlled robot that is so small, it can walk on the top of a US penny.

In their research published in the journal Science Robotics, the Northwestern University led team said these crab-like robots are 0.5mm wide. The engineers said these robots can bend, twist, crawl, walk, turn and even jump, without the use of complex hardware or hydraulics.

The engineers said the tiny robot is powered by the elastic resilience of its body. To construct the robot, the researchers used a shape-memory alloy material that transforms to its “remembered” shape when heated.

Using a laser, the team is able to heat the robots at specific parts of its body, causing it to change shape. As the robot deforms and goes back to its original shape, it creates locomotion.

“Because these structures are so tiny, the rate of cooling is very fast,” project lead John A. Rogers said. “In fact, reducing the sizes of these robots allows them to run faster.”

While the research is in the exploratory phase, the team believes their technology could lead to micro-sized robots that can perform practical tasks in tightly confined spaces.

“You might imagine micro-robots as agents to repair or assemble small structures or machines in industry or as surgical assistants to clear clogged arteries, to stop internal bleeding or to eliminate cancerous tumors – all in minimally invasive procedures,” Rogers said.

Pop-up crab

Rogers and Yonggang Huang, who led the theoretical work, created the robot based on a pop-up assembly method, inspired by children’s pop-up books.

The team fabricated precursors to the walking crab structures in flat, planar geometries. They then bonded the precursors onto a stretched rubber substrate.

When the stretched substrate is relaxed, a buckling process occurs that causes the crab to “pop up” into precisely defined three-dimensional forms.

“With these assembly techniques and materials concepts, we can build walking robots with almost any sizes or 3D shapes,” Rogers said. “But the students felt inspired and amused by the sideways crawling motions of tiny crabs. It was a creative whim.”

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