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Liquid-fueled microscopic robot

17.01.2021

Researchers at the University of Southern California's Autonomous Microrobot Laboratory (AMSL) have created the world's smallest, lightest, fully autonomous crawling microscopic robot. The device, called the RoBeetle, has a mass of just 88 milligrams - roughly the equivalent mass of three grains of rice. The robot uses a fundamentally new type of actuator that functions like an artificial muscle.

The artificial musculature of the RoBeetle robot is powered by controlled catalytic combustion, a technology that will enable the development of a new generation of micro-robots capable of functioning on land, water and air.

Small robots require a highly efficient source of autonomous energy. At the same time, the existing technologies of electric batteries are still inferior in terms of specific energy to liquid fuel. Thus, the specific energy of ordinary methanol (20 MJ/kg) is approximately an order of magnitude higher than that of the most advanced batteries (1,8 MJ/kg).

The "muscles" of RoBeetle are based on thin wires of nitinol - a nickel-titanium alloy with a shape memory effect. Parts made from this material can be deformed, but when heated, they will return to their original form. A platinum catalyst was sprayed onto the filaments, on which methanol vapor is burned. Its warmth causes the robot's nitinol "legs" to contract to "relax" again as it cools.

With a dead weight of just 88 milligrams, the robot can move objects 2,6 times heavier, and installing an additional "fuel tank" of 95 milligrams of methanol provides it with autonomous operation for almost two hours. The authors of the invention assure that if a similar system would use a traditional battery, it would work no more than a few seconds.

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