Meet the world’s smallest remote control robot

Engineers have created the world’s smallest remote control robot.

The tiny crab-looking robotic device is the size of a ballpoint pen tip, engineers from Northwestern University created them in order to carry out intricate tasks that humans couldn’t do.

They’re just half a millimetre wide, which is nuts to think about, and they can bend, twist, crawl and even jump – honestly, horrifying.

Can certainly see these popping up in a few prank videos in a few years’ time. 

John A. Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering and neurological surgery at Northwestern, said, “You might imagine micro-robots as agents to repair or assemble small structures or machines in industry or as surgical assistants to clear clogged arteries, to stop internal bleeding or to eliminate cancerous tumours — all in minimally invasive procedures.”

Northwestern University Professor, Yonggang Huang added: “Our technology enables a variety of controlled motion modalities and can walk with an average speed of half its body length per second. This is very challenging to achieve at such small scales for terrestrial robots.”

They’re made of shape-memory alloy, which means researchers can heat them to teach the robots to carry out different movements. 

They don’t use electricity or any other hardware to move, and instead, have ‘elastic resilience’ similar to that of a pop-up book that enables them to move. 

Source: Agencies World smallest remote control robot World smallest remote control robot