Our lab at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa has developed an optically controlled microrobot system. The microrobots consist of very tiny (0.1 to 0.5 mm in diameter) air bubbles inside of a fluid-filled chamber. Light is used to heat the surface of the chamber, which generates a force that moves around the microrobots. The microrobots can be used move around objects that are less than a millimeter in size. This can be useful for building structures made up of living cells. For more information see our lab website at

http://www-ee.eng.hawaii.edu/~aohta/research.html

You Can Download Research PDF Here

Or Check Our Academic Papers Page

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Well, it helps if you have a laser cutter and a PhD in robotics.

Created by Paul Birkmeyer and Prof. Ronald Fearing at the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab at UC Berkeley, DASH is extremely lightweight (16 grams) and uses a single DC motor to power the legs and a small servomotor to slightly deform the robot’s body, making it turn left or right. The little robot can reach speeds of 1.5 meters per second and is flexible/strong enough to be dropped from a height of 28 meters without breaking. It picks up and dashes off again. Just be careful about running the robot near people who are squeamish about insects — or DASH might get smashed.

Video: http://youtu.be/LsTKAtBBkfU

DASH Roachbot Learns Acrobatic Flips from Real Cockroach

DASH, UC Berkeley’s 10-centimeter long, 16-gram Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, has learned a new trick: the robot can now perform “rapid inversion” maneuvers, dashing up to a ledge and then swinging itself around to end up underneath the ledge and upside-down. This replicates behaviors in cockroaches and geckos, and may lead to a new generation of acrobatically-inclined insectobots.

Cockroaches have a notorious (and much hated) ability to vanish from sight before your brain even decides you should take a swat at it. And if you’ve ever tried to chase down a gecko , you know that they’re not just fast, but they’re also incredibly agile. These abilities stem in great part from the fact that cockroaches and geckos are small and light, and consequently don’t have to overcome much inertia when changing direction. We’ve only recently been able to take advantage of technologies that allow for the creation of robots at similar scales, and such robots (like DASH) exhibit impressive speed and agility.

Recently, researchers at UC Berkeley’s PolyPEDAL Lab, led by Professor Robert Full, demonstrated that cockroaches can perform “rapid inversions” on a ledge, a previously unknown behavior. Surprisingly, while on a vacation research trip at the Wildlife Reserves near Singapore, the researchers discovered a similar behavior in lizards and documented geckos using this technique in the jungle to escape predators and nosy scientists. Next, Full’s group teamed up with roboticists from Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab to see if DASH could be taught to do the same sort of thing. Sure it could:

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Youtube Video – http://youtu.be/VRMEtCCDR_E

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http://youtu.be/VxSs1kGZQqc

https://micro.seas.harvard.edu/publications.html (Publications Harward)

Check the articke below for detailed information about the video.

 https://micro.seas.harvard.edu/papers/JMM11_Sreetharan_cover.pdf

The post Nano&Micro Scale – Pop-up Fabrication of the Harvard Monolithic Bee (Mobee) – 11022 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

http://youtu.be/8B91psOGwss

You will need:

-A toothbrush head
-A cellphone vibrator motor
-A little battery (Watch Battey)

How to make a BristleBot – Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

http://youtu.be/rUSTXUis_ys

The BristleBot is a simple and tiny robot with an agenda. The ingredients? One toothbrush, a battery, and a pager motor. The result? Serious fun.
The BristleBot is our take on the popular vibrobot, a simple category of robot that is controlled by a single vibrating (eccentric) motor.

Some neat varieties include the mint-tin version as seen in Make Magazine, and the kid’s art bot: a vibrobot with pens for feet.

The starting point is of course the toothbrush. We need one that has more-or-less uniformly angled bristles. (While it may be possible to take one with straight bristles and bend them to suit, I haven’t tried.) If the bristle length is nonuniform (as it is here), it may take scissors to make the bristles all the same.

Cut off the handle of the toothbrush, leaving only a neat little robotics platform.

Next, we need a vibrating pager motor or other tiny motor with an unbalanced output shaft. If you should happen to find a small enough motor you can always add the weight yourself, but usually motors this size are made for pagers anyway. I got mine on eBay for a few bucks; you can also get them here, for example.

The kind that I got are happy to run on almost any common voltage– probably a range of 1-9 V. As a power source, you can use an alkaline or lithium coin cell or watch battery, either 1.5 V or 3 V. To hook the motor to the battery I soldered short copper wire leads to the motor terminals.

The last substantial ingredient is some foam tape. Apply a small piece to the top of the toothbrush robotic platform, which will be used to hold the motor in place.

Attach the motor to the foam tape. The tape provides a spacer so that the rotating weight does not hit the toothbrush head. It also provides a strong, flexible connection to the base that is able to handle the severe vibration that this robot experiences.

Bend one of the leads down flush with the foam tape, so that you can *stick* the battery to the foam tape as well and still make an electrical connection. The other lead contacts the other side of the battery, and the motor can run.

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