What is it about?
This review article highlights the fundamental role of bioinspiration in designing microrobots, and how this led to adopting novel materials. Microrobots are tiny untethered, mobile robotic devices that could, someday, find applications in minimally-invasive medicine. To make these tiny objects functional, researchers have taken inspiration from biological microorganisms, which have a similar size and are extremely smart. Microorganisms have a much simpler design than complex multicellular organisms, and their behaviours often originate directly from the matter that constitutes their single-celled bodies. For this reason, researchers incorporated new, life-like features in microrobots by building them with novel soft and smart materials.
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Why is it important?
Microrobotics is placed at the intersection between robotics and material science. New microrobots designs call for innovative materials, while novel materials find applications in microrobots. This process is driven by the observation of nature, and in particular of biological microorganisms, and can lead to ground-breaking results.
Perspectives
By summarizing the role of bioinspiration and novel materials in the development of functional microrobots, this review lays the ground and proposes a method for developing the next generation of intelligent microrobots.
Stefano Palagi
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Bioinspired microrobots, Nature Reviews Materials, May 2018, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1038/s41578-018-0016-9.
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