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As fast as their tiny 'bot' legs will carry them!
Science NationImagine robots no bigger than your finger tip scrambling through the rubble of a disaster site to search for victims or to assess damage. That's the vision of engineer Sarah Bergbreiter and her research team at the University of Maryland. With support from NSF, the team is building micro-robots, using insects as inspiration--starting with the legs. The objective is to create legs that will ultimately allow a millimeter-scale robot to traverse rough terrain at high speeds. Many insects jump to clear obstacles, so the research team is working to build that capability into some of the micro-robots as well. The researchers have to test out different materials and designs on bigger robots before scaling them down to size. In fact, these robots are so small that the research team uses microscopes to build them.
Credit: National Science Foundation
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