Electronically Integrated Autonomous Microscopic Robots

ORAL  · Invited

Abstract

What would we be able to do if we could build electronically integrated machines the at a scale of 100 microns? At this scale, semiconductor devices are small enough that we could put the computational power of the spaceship Voyager onto a machine that could be injected into the body. Such robots could have on board detectors, power sources, and processors that enable them to sense, interact, and control their local environment. In this talk I will describe several cutting edge technologies we are developing to achieve this vision.

*This research was supported by grants from ARO (W911NF-23-1-0212) NSF (DMR-1719875; CMMI-2325585) and NIH (5R21EY033080-02).

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Publication: Miskin, Marc Z., Alejandro J. Cortese, Kyle Dorsey, Edward P. Esposito, Michael F. Reynolds, Qingkun Liu, Michael Cao, David A. Muller, Paul L. McEuen, and Itai Cohen. "Fabrication of electronically integrated, mass-manufactured, microscopic robots." (2020).

Liu, Qingkun, Wei Wang, Michael F. Reynolds, Michael C. Cao, Marc Z. Miskin, Tomas A. Arias, David A. Muller, Paul L. McEuen, and Itai Cohen. "Micrometer-sized electrically programmable shape-memory actuators for low-power microrobotics." Science Robotics 6, no. 52 (2021): eabe6663.

Reynolds, Michael F., Alejandro J. Cortese, Qingkun Liu, Zhangqi Zheng, Wei Wang, Samantha L. Norris, Sunwoo Lee et al. "Microscopic robots with onboard digital control." Science Robotics 7, no. 70 (2022): eabq2296.

Wang, Wei, Qingkun Liu, Ivan Tanasijevic, Michael F. Reynolds, Alejandro J. Cortese, Marc Z. Miskin, Michael C. Cao et al. "Cilia metasurfaces for electronically programmable microfluidic manipulation." Nature 605, no. 7911 (2022): 681-686.

Bao, Nanqi, Qingkun Liu, Michael F. Reynolds, Marc Figueras, Evangelos Smith, Wei Wang, Michael C. Cao et al. "Gas-phase microactuation using kinetically controlled surface states of ultrathin catalytic sheets." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, no. 19 (2023): e2221740120.

Liu, Qingkun, Wei Wang, Himani Sinhmar, Itay Griniasty, Jason Z. Kim, Jacob T. Pelster, Paragkumar Chaudhari et al. "Electronically configurable microscopic metasheet robots." Nature Materials 24, no. 1 (2025): 109-115.

Taghavi, Milad, Wei Wang, Kyubum Shim, Jinsong Zhang, Itai Cohen, and Alyssa Apsel. "Coordinated behavior of autonomous microscopic machines through local electronic pulse coupling." Science Robotics 9, no. 96 (2024): eadn8067.

Smart, Conrad L., Tanner G. Pearson, Zexi Liang, Melody X. Lim, Mohamed I. Abdelrahman, Francesco Monticone, Itai Cohen, and Paul L. McEuen. "Magnetically programmed diffractive robotics." Science 386, no. 6725 (2024): 1031-1037.

Liu, Qingkun, Jacob Pelster, et al. Strong Microscopic Actuators (in preparation)

Ji, Yanxin Amphibious Microscopic Acatuators (in Preparation)

Wang Wei, Jinsong Zhang, et al. Coupling Environmental Physics to the Behavior of Microscopic Robots (in preparation)

Presenters

  • Itai Cohen

    • Cornell University

Authors

  • Itai Cohen

    • Cornell University