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Imagine using a mobile app to control thousands of robot doctors in your body to dance a dance... This scene does not seem far away.
Children like robots, and adults like them too. We have watched too much in the movie, but few people know how far the robots are currently? Boston's robot dog is certainly very attractive, and the robot that can spin, jump and turn around like a human is also enough to surprise the eye. However, just as there is a micro world under the macro world, micro robots are also a position that cannot be underestimated. Imagine that one day you bought a mobile phone with an app that can control thousands of micro robots in your body, monitor your health, and even dance a robot dance in your blood vessels to music. That must feel amazing! Actually, this scene does not seem far away. ——At least, you can make these robots and inject them into your body now (of course, no one will care about the consequences for the time being). And the price of these robots is really not too cheap, because they can be mass-produced, and you can "print" millions of them at once, each only costs a few cents, and they are very flexible in running! Mini robots spawned by new actuators We may have heard of many micro-robots before, such as DNA origami robots (a drug delivery robot assembled from single-stranded DNA, which relies on the circulatory system in the human body to move), multi-legged soft robots (a kind of soft silicon The robot is made of thin slices and has hundreds of hairy legs underneath, which can move efficiently in the human body with the assistance of external electromagnetic equipment), and even a healable living cell robot (a robot that uses a combination of skin cells and cardiomyocytes, Asymmetric force can be generated through the contraction of cardiomyocytes to complete specific exercise), and so on. But they all seem to be expensive, or have some shortcomings, such as not flexible enough, unable to communicate, single function, far away from reality, immune response, large size... etc. And this time, scientists(Hermes Birkin 42cm JPG Bag) at Cornell University used a very simple method to create a miniature robot that can communicate with the outside and can have very diverse functions. And its size can reach 0.1 mm or less, and it can be millions of pieces. Together, the application prospect is very promising. The core of the application of this robot is that it has a relatively mature "head"; its key breakthrough is that it has a new type of "leg". From this fascinating little thing, we can see how scientists have achieved amazing technological breakthroughs through a "small" innovation on top of existing technology. (In fact, its "head" also comes from the previous innovations of the same team members. The team can be described as "one step at a time".) Let’s talk about its head first. Of course, this part is readily available. The manufacturing process of the robot head comes from the existing semiconductor manufacturing technology. With the development of Moore's Law for more than 50 years, the semiconductor industry is using more and more advanced production processes to manufacture smaller and smaller devices. Now, these processes can put millions of transistors into a space almost the size of a single-celled paramecium. Not only that, they can also make miniature sensors, LED screens, and a bunch of packages that are too small to see. (Moore's law refers to: when the price remains the same, the number of components that can be accommodated on an integrated circuit will double about every 18 to 24 months, and the performance will also double. By Gordon Moore It was proposed in 1965, and the bottleneck is about to be reached.) This is the basis of mini robots and the basis of all current intelligent machines. We can imagine what a robot without legs looks like. Yes, it looks like the smartphone in your hand. In less than 15 years, it has taken control of the entire world. It is not only quite intelligent, with first-class communication functions, but also can be controlled with one hand. There are so many components inside that you have to put under a microscope to see the circuit on the chip clearly. The head of this mini-robot from Cornell University is similar to it, just like a cell-level smartphone, equipped with a dedicated application, and its size is tens of thousands of times smaller than a normal phone. It is called Optical Wireless Integrated Circuit (OWIC). There is a small solar cell on it. If you shine light on it, it will activate a small circuit to drive the mini LED screen to communicate with the outside world. Just like fireflies. The cool thing is that we have different OWICs, with different sensors (convert different signals into electrical signals), some can measure voltage, some can measure temperature, or some are just a flashing light spot, tell you It is there. These OWICs, as miniature security smart tags, have better recognition than fingerprints. Therefore, it is also used in other medical devices to obtain more information, and can even be put into the brain to listen to neurons and transmit signals through LED flashing. However, this is just a "head" without legs and cannot move. To be a truly mobile robot, you must have legs. Therefore, on this basis, scientists developed a set of moving legs for it, or we can call it an actuator. Observing under a microscope, you can see that it will curl up under voltage. These legs are so small that they fit the mini-heads so that the red blood cells are placed next to them, like a bagel next to chopsticks. Of course, you don't even want to see it with the naked eye. How does it move? It turned out that the power came from the platinum layer deposited on the legs-about a dozen atomic layers thick. If you put platinum in water and apply a voltage, the atoms in the water will adsorb or detach from the platinum surface—depending on the voltage level—and generate force. With the help of adsorbing or driving away the atomic layer on the platinum surface, the movement of the leg can be controlled, because the leg has only one side of the platinum layer and the other side is titanium or other materials. Because these striped legs are very thin, they can be bent and straightened repeatedly without breaking. The researchers also made a pattern with a rigid board (rigid polymer) on this basis, the gap is like a human knee and ankle, so that the legs can bend as expected and can make desired movements. In this way, a mini robot with both head and feet appeared. It has both thought and driving force. OWIC is its brain, providing us with sensors and power (converting light into voltage), and interacting with us through light. The platinum layer is the muscle that allows the robot to move around. As long as the laser is projected on different solar panels of OWIC to generate voltage, you can choose which leg to drive to move, so that it can walk. Use photolithography technology to achieve mass production But the more wonderful thing about this research is not how small and flexible the robot is, but that it can be mass-produced, which can be several million at a time. You would think that these heads and feet should be manufactured separately and then joined together. In fact, this is not the case. It uses photolithography technology, just like manufacturing traditional chips, similar to layer-by-layer printing, first "printing" on the wafer together, and then using chemicals to "pick" off the bottom substrate. The head and legs can be printed at the same time, one "print" is millions, and one "pull" is a robot army. After leaving the substrate, they are free to fold into the shape of the finished product. It is reported that on a 4-inch (about 10 cm) wafer, one million such robots can be manufactured. It only needs very low voltage and very little energy to operate, and the energy efficiency is very high. And it is very strong, can endure various acid-base environments and temperature changes over 200 degrees Celsius. You can move freely within 20 seconds after manufacturing. Since the very weak current can control the movement of their legs, they have great potential for integration with microelectronic circuits and can be seamlessly integrated with sensors and logic components (upgrading the head). This means that in the future, these robots will not only complete simple tasks such as walking, but also receive more advanced instructions from sensors and logic circuits, possess perception capabilities and programmability, and perform rich and complex activities. Even, one day, it may become a resident engineer in our body. With a tiny needle, thousands of robots can be injected into our body to perform various functions. Just like now, they can pass the needle smoothly and unscathed. However, everything has some limitations. This robot currently faces some bottlenecks. For example, at present, they have not been able to shake off the direct control of people. In other words, it is still a group of puppets. Its energy source, calculation and decision-making components are separated from the body, and researchers need to be illuminated by lasers to provide instructions for the robot. And this is still essentially a size limitation. If a fully autonomous robot can be made that combines energy storage, logic circuits and sensors, it will certainly have broader application prospects. However, it faces more stringent technical limitations on small scales. The functions that can be implemented on a 500-micron micro-robot may be extremely difficult for a 50-micron robot, and may not be possible for a 5-micron robot. Therefore, this robot is currently more of a model, showing us the extraordinary application prospects of micro robots before breaking through the technical limitations. If one day we break through all these bottlenecks, then we will truly usher in an artificial microcosm. There, countless robots live in our tissues and blood like bacteria, reminding us of possible health risks and opportunistic surgical operations; when the cells become cancerous, they gather again to fight against cancer cells one by one and pass The cell phone tells us the condition. When our children go to the wild to take a drop of water and put it under the microscope, they will see not only paramecium and bacteria, but also small robots, witnessing our strange interaction with nature. I really look forward to that day, I don’t know if you are like me.
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