Travel Support for NIST Micro-Robotics Challenge at IEEE ICRA 2011

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This project supports student travel to the NIST Micro-Robotics Challenge which involves advances in the design and fabrication of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) enabling the development of mobile micro-robots that can autonomously navigate and manipulate in controlled environments. It is expected that this technology will be critical in applications as varied as intelligent sensor networks, in vivo medical diagnosis and treatment, and adaptive microelectronics. Students explore micro-robot locomotion, power storage, embedded intelligence, and motion measurement. The NIST performance-based competitions for mobile micro-robots: 1) motivates researchers to accelerate micro-robot development, 2) reveals the most pressing technical challenges, and 3) evaluates the most successful methods for locomotion and manipulation at the micro-scale (e.g., actuation techniques for crawling).In the competition research teams showcase working demonstrations that support the challenge themes of micro-scale actuation, manipulation and locomotion. This funding increases the competitiveness of US teams, as this event has traditionally been dominated by teams from Europe. The multi-day competitions are held during the IEEE ICRA conference providing an excellent opportunity to engage a broad technical audience. These are also be open to the general public to raise awareness of the state-of-the-art. The competitions provide an opportunity for students and leaders to learn how micro-robotics can play an important role in society.