May 26 (UPI) – A team of engineers from Northwestern University announced the invention of the world’s smallest remote-controlled walking robot, which is only half a millimeter wide.
Engineers said in a study published in the journal Science Robotics that their crab-like robot is smaller than a penny thick.
John A. Rogers, an engineering professor at Evanston School, Illinois, and co-author of the research study, said his team needed a year and a half to develop the little robots.
Robots can walk, spin, spin and jump. They are made of a malleable alloy with shape memory, which moves changing shape when heat is applied. Rogers said the heat needed comes from lasers.
“A laser is a convenient way to do this because we can focus light on a very small point and we can scan that point to illuminate different parts of the robot’s body in a time sequence,” Rogers told CNN.
He said the robots could eventually be used for surgical purposes or for small-scale machine repairs.