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My students and I
work on very tiny robots.

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Now, you can think of these
as robotic versions

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of something that you're all
very familiar with: an ant.

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We all know that ants
and other insects at this size scale

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can do some pretty incredible things.

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We've all seen a group of ants,
or some version of that,

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carting off your potato chip
at a picnic, for example.

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But what are the real challenges
of engineering these ants?

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Well, first of all, how do we get
the capabilities of an ant

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in a robot at the same size scale?

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Well, first we need to figure out
how to make them move

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when they're so small.

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We need mechanisms like legs
and efficient motors

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in order to support that locomotion,

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and we need the sensors,
power and control

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in order to pull everything together
in a semi-intelligent ant robot.

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And finally, to make
these things really functional,

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we want a lot of them working together
in order to do bigger things.

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So I'll start with mobility.

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Insects move around amazingly well.

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This video is from UC Berkeley.

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It shows a cockroach moving
over incredibly rough terrain

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without tipping over,

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and it's able to do this because its legs
are a combination of rigid materials,

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which is what we traditionally
use to make robots,

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and soft materials.

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Jumping is another really interesting way
to get around when you're very small.

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So these insects store energy in a spring
and release that really quickly

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to get the high power they need
to jump out of water, for example.

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So one of the big
contributions from my lab

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has been to combine
rigid and soft materials

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in very, very small mechanisms.

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So this jumping mechanism
is about four millimeters on a side,

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so really tiny.

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The hard material here is silicon,
and the soft material is silicone rubber.

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And the basic idea is that
we're going to compress this,

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store energy in the springs,
and then release it to jump.

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So there's no motors
on board this right now, no power.

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This is actuated with a method
that we call in my lab

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"graduate student with tweezers."
(Laughter)

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So what you'll see in the next video

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is this guy doing
amazingly well for its jumps.

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So this is Aaron, the graduate student
in question, with the tweezers,

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and what you see is this 
four-millimeter-sized mechanism

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jumping almost 40 centimeters high.

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That's almost 100 times its own length.

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And it survives, bounces on the table,

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it's incredibly robust, and of course
survives quite well until we lose it

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because it's very tiny.

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Ultimately, though, we want
to add motors to this too,

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and we have students in the lab
working on millimeter-sized motors

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to eventually integrate onto
small, autonomous robots.

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But in order to look at mobility and
locomotion at this size scale to start,

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we're cheating and using magnets.

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So this shows what would eventually
be part of a micro-robot leg,

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and you can see the silicone rubber joints

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and there's an embedded magnet
that's being moved around

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by an external magnetic field.

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So this leads to the robot
that I showed you earlier.

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The really interesting thing
that this robot can help us figure out

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is how insects move at this scale.

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We have a really good model
for how everything

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from a cockroach up to an elephant moves.

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We all move in this 
kind of bouncy way when we run.

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But when I'm really small, 
the forces between my feet and the ground

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are going to affect my locomotion
a lot more than my mass,

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which is what causes that bouncy motion.

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So this guy doesn't work quite yet,

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but we do have slightly larger versions
that do run around.

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So this is about a centimeter cubed,
a centimeter on a side, so very tiny,

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and we've gotten this to run
about 10 body lengths per second,

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so 10 centimeters per second.

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It's pretty quick for a little, small guy,

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and that's really only limited 
by our test setup.

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But this gives you some idea
of how it works right now.

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We can also make 3D-printed versions 
of this that can climb over obstacles,

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a lot like the cockroach
that you saw earlier.

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But ultimately we want to add
everything onboard the robot.

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We want sensing, power, control,
actuation all together,

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and not everything
needs to be bio-inspired.

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So this robot's about
the size of a Tic Tac.

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And in this case, instead of magnets
or muscles to move this around,

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we use rockets.

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So this is a micro-fabricated
energetic material,

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and we can create tiny pixels of this,

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and we can put one of these pixels
on the belly of this robot,

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and this robot, then, is going to jump
when it senses an increase in light.

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So the next video is one of my favorites.

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So you have this 300-milligram robot

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jumping about eight
centimeters in the air.

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It's only four by four
by seven millimeters in size.

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And you'll see a big flash
at the beginning

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when the energetic is set off,

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and the robot tumbling through the air.

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So there was that big flash,

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and you can see the robot
jumping up through the air.

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So there's no tethers on this,
no wires connecting to this.

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Everything is onboard,
and it jumped in response

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to the student just flicking on
a desk lamp next to it.

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So I think you can imagine
all the cool things that we could do

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with robots that can run and crawl
and jump and roll at this size scale.

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Imagine the rubble that you get after 
a natural disaster like an earthquake.

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Imagine these small robots
running through that rubble

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to look for survivors.

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Or imagine a lot of small robots
running around a bridge

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in order to inspect it
and make sure it's safe

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so you don't get collapses like this,

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which happened outside of 
Minneapolis in 2007.

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Or just imagine what you could do

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if you had robots that could
swim through your blood.

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Right? "Fantastic Voyage," Isaac Asimov.

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Or they could operate without having
to cut you open in the first place.

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Or we could radically change
the way we build things

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if we have our tiny robots
work the same way that termites do,

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and they build these incredible
eight-meter-high mounds,

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effectively well ventilated
apartment buildings for other termites

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in Africa and Australia.

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So I think I've given you
some of the possibilities

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of what we can do with these small robots.

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And we've made some advances so far,
but there's still a long way to go,

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and hopefully some of you
can contribute to that destination.

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Thanks very much.

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(Applause)