NRI: Electronically Integrated Microscopic Robot Swarms

微型机器人群的梦想在纳米科学、机器人技术和科幻小说中已经存在了几十年。这种机器人就像半导体电子产品一样，一次可以制造数百万个，每个成本只有一分钱的几分之一。成群的这些微型机器可以一起工作来完成一些有用的任务，比如用预制的电子元件组装电路，修复材料上的微尺度裂缝，或者可能在最小的尺度上治愈身体。几十年来，这一愿景一直没有实现，但50年来摩尔定律的缩放导致了电子元件和系统的惊人小型化，提高了微型机器人群最终触手可及的可能性。这个奖项支持建造第一批电子控制的、可编程的机器人，每一个都比这句话末尾的句号小十倍。由于每台机器都是大规模生产的，并且可以重新编程，这项研究朝着经济实惠的系统迈出了重要的一步，使新的研究人员或行业合作伙伴能够精确控制微观世界。这个项目的目标是制造一个拥有10,000个可编程代理的机器人群，每个代理的边长不超过几百微米。也就是说，研究小组的目标是将最小的可编程机器人的尺寸缩小十倍，同时制造一个比目前技术水平多十倍的群体。为了达到这些规模，该团队在电路、机器人和纳米制造方面进行了几项创新，以解决微尺度物理在推进、记忆和通信方面的基本限制。首先，研究小组计划利用润滑理论的概念，制造在粘性流体中快速行走和可靠转弯的机器人，尽管低摩擦力与低质量运动相关。为了精确定位和组织，该团队将开发基于全球信标传感和通信策略的硬件方案，让机器人在周围流体环境中驱动和检测电化学。最后，将开发专门针对可编程微尺度机器极端内存限制的群算法。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The dream of microrobot swarms has been around for decades in nanoscience, robotics and science fiction. Built like semiconductor electronics, such robots could be made millions at a time, each costing just fractions of a penny. Swarms of these tiny machines could work together to carry out useful tasks like assembling circuits from prefabricated electronic components, repairing microscale cracks in materials, or potentially healing the body at its smallest scales. For decades this vision has been unrealized, but 50 years of Moore’s law scaling have resulted in an amazing miniaturization of electronic components and systems raising the possibility that microscale robot swarms may finally be within reach. This award supports work towards building the first swarm of electronically controlled, programmable robots, each one ten times smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. As each machine is mass-manufactured and can be reprogramed, this research takes a major step towards an affordable system that enables new researchers or industry partners to manipulate the microworld with precision and control.This project sets the goal of a robot swarm with 10,000 programmable agents, each no larger than a few hundred microns on a side. That is, the research team aims to shrink the size of the smallest programmable robot ten-fold and to simultaneously make a swarm with ten times more agents than the state of the art. To reach these scales, the team pursues several innovations in circuits, robotics, and nanofabrication that address the fundamental constraints on propulsion, memory, and communication that arise from microscale physics. First, the research team plans to leverage concepts from lubrication theory to make robots that walk quickly and turn reliably in viscous fluids, despite the low frictional forces associated with low mass locomotion. For precise localization and organization, the team will develop hardware schemes based on global beacon sensing and communication strategies where robots drive and detect electrochemistry in the surrounding fluid environment. Finally, the swarm algorithms specially tailored to address the extreme memory constraints of programmable microscale machines will be developed.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.