{"id":28,"date":"2009-11-02T20:23:45","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T19:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/?p=28"},"modified":"2026-04-23T16:18:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T15:18:57","slug":"the-miniature-robots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/2009\/11\/02\/the-miniature-robots\/","title":{"rendered":"Swarms of miniature robots, the future of surveillance and not only"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Miniature Robots? An international research <strong>project<\/strong> in several countries like Sweden, Spain, Germany and Italy is working on the development of microscopic <strong>robots<\/strong>, as small as <strong>insects<\/strong>, which in a near future might carry out several tasks if used in a <strong>group<\/strong>, wirelessly interconnected with each other.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The <strong>I-SWARM<\/strong> <strong>miniature robots<\/strong> (the acronym stands for <strong>Intelligent<\/strong> Small-World Autonomous Robots for Micro-manipulation) are based on a single <strong>chip<\/strong>, mounted on a 4-mm <strong>circuit<\/strong> board. Inside this single chip are installed the <strong>modules<\/strong> governing motion, <strong>communication<\/strong> with other robots and power saving.<\/p>\n<h2>What are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/topics\/engineering\/microrobots\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">miniature robots<\/a>?<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">All this is <strong>molded<\/strong>, by using a special conductive <strong>glue<\/strong>, on a flexible double-sided circuit <strong>board<\/strong>, which is folded in two thus doubling the available surface. The micro robot is powered by a <strong>solar cell<\/strong> located on the top, and movement is performed by three miniature <strong>legs<\/strong>, plus a fourth one working as a touch sensor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">By <strong>integrating<\/strong> tens or hundreds of micro robots among each other, making them communicate via <strong>infrared<\/strong> sensors, it is possible to program them as a whole group, setting them up to carry out <strong>complex<\/strong> tasks that a single robot would never be able to accomplish, such as, for example, cleaning of large surfaces, <strong>assembly<\/strong> or installation of micromechanical parts, and a whole lot of other jobs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In a more distant future, a <strong>swarm<\/strong> of micro robots on which, along with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/\">infrared <strong>sensor<\/strong><\/a>, one might install a micro <strong>camera<\/strong>, could be used for surveillance and <strong>monitoring<\/strong> operations on large sensitive areas, almost completely <strong>invisible<\/strong> for thieves or spies, who would certainly not be able to locate and <strong>destro<\/strong>y each and every robot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Miniature Robots? An international research project in several countries like Sweden, Spain, Germany and Italy is working on the development of microscopic robots, as small as insects, which in a near future might carry out several tasks if used in a group, wirelessly interconnected with each other. The I-SWARM miniature<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","two-columns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6157,"href":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/6157"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.endoacustica.com\/blogen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}