The Miniaturised Co-operative Robots Advancing Towards the Nano Range (MICRON) project headed by Institute for Process Control and Robotics (IPR) in Karlsruhe, Germany devised micro robots that can perform duties from cell manipulation to micro assembly, offering researchers a glimpse of the future.

"Each one would measure about 1.5cm by 3 cm," says IPR´s Joerg Seyfried. "They were designed to be complete robots, with different kinds of actuators for gripping, cell manipulation, and so on. Each one would be wireless, with lots of electronics on board, and an infrared control system - rather like a TV remote, but two-way in this case. They would be able to cooperate together on a range of tasks."

"Our experiments showed that the cell injection is entirely feasible, as is the micro soldering," says Seyfried. Although the MICRON robots are clearly not a mass market product, commercialisation - though still far off - would be perfectly possible, he believes: "Robots with this sort of capability, and mobility, would be perfectly suited to lab work, such as the micro assembly of prototypes. Tasks such as cell injection could be performed on a mass scale."

Read more about the micro robot from IST Results.

[Photo Credits: IST]