Chennai: Scientists have made the first microscopic robots that incorporate semiconductor components, allowing them to be controlled—and made to walk—with standard electronic signals.
Roughly the size of paramecium, these robots provide a template for building even more complex versions that utilize silicon-based intelligence, can be mass produced, and may someday travel through human tissue and blood.
The Cornell University-led collaboration is headed by Itai Cohen, professor of physics, Paul McEuen, the John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science and their former postdoctoral researcher Marc Miskin, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The walking robots are the latest iteration, and in many ways an evolution, of Cohen and McEuen’s previous nanoscale creations, from microscopic sensors to graphene-based origami machines.