This work explores the viability of using 3D printing as a rapid-prototyping technique for microrobotic appendages made from thin-film PZT/polymer materials. First, the possibility of integrating piezoelectric materials into millimeter-scale (meso-scale) polymer melt-printed structures was investigated. Next, one specific robot limb geometry was chosen as a basis to compare structural modeling ...

The main goal of the proposed research is to develop a team of micro-machines for in-situ repair and maintenance within constrained and hazardous environments. The use of micro-machines removes human workers from having to crawl within highly cluttered and constrained spaces, breathing in stale air mixed with fumes from welding or particulates from repair work, and provides higher reliability a...

Evolutionary Artificial Potential Field (EAPF) functions are utilized for mobile robot navigation in a microrobot soccer (MiroSot) environment. In a micro-robot soccer system the robots are monitored using an overhead CCD Camera, making it suitable for real time application of the EAPF functions. The effectiveness of the EAPF functions in real time mobile robot navigation are verified through e...

Recent biological studies on water strider insects revealed the detailed mechanism of their staying and walking on water. While macro scale bodies use buoyancy to stay on water, these very light and small insects balance their weight using repulsive surface tension forces where the insect legs are covered with hydrophobic micro-hairs. Utilizing the unique scaling advantage of these insects, thi...

In this paper an evolutionary algorithm is developed to learn a fuzzy knowledge base for the control of a soccer playing micro-robot from any configuration belonging to a grid of initial configurations to hit the ball along the ball to goal line of sight. The knowledge base uses relative co-ordinate system including left and right wheel velocities of the robot. Final path positions allow forwar...

Image sensing at a small scale is essentially important in many fields, including microsample observation, defect inspection, material characterization and so on. However, nowadays, multi-directional micro object imaging is still very challenging due to the limited field of view (FOV) of microscopes. This paper reports a novel approach for multi-directional image sensing in microscopes by devel...