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Miniature robot transformer

13.12.2012

This device does not look like anything familiar - some kind of caterpillar of many metal rings, stripes, hairpins, nuts and screws twisted in disorder on each other, the personification of chaos in a locker box. But in fact, this is a very serious device. It's called millimotein - both millimeter-sized components and motorized design are encrypted in the name, and proteins - complex protein molecules that naturally fold into incredibly complex shapes. This tiny robot could be a harbinger of future devices that could fold themselves into almost any shape imaginable.

The device was conceived by Neil Gershenfeld, head of one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Science Centers, visiting scientist Ara Knayan and graduate student Kenneth Cheng. It was recently presented at the 2012 Intelligent Robots and Systems Conference.

"Its key feature is that it's actually a one-dimensional robot that can be constructed as a continuous strip of conditionally moving parts that can then be folded into arbitrary shapes," says Gershenfeld.

To build the smallest robot in the world, the team had to come up with an entirely new kind of engine: not only small and powerful, but also capable of staying ready to go even when the power was off. In principle, the engine vaguely resembles the giant electromagnets used in scrap yards. The ones that can lift a car. They contain a powerful permanent magnet, which, like a regular natural one, does not require special electrical power. Paired with it is a weaker magnet - one whose magnetic field is induced by a coil. These two magnets are designed so that their fields either add up or cancel each other out, depending on how you switch them. Thus, the power of a powerful magnet can be turned off at will - for example, to release a lifted load, such as a car - without having to expend a huge amount of energy on the electromagnet all the time.

Miniaturized for a tiny robot, this motor principle is a series of permanent magnets paired with electromagnets arranged in a circle.

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