{"id":194121,"date":"2025-12-19T07:10:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T07:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-worlds-smallest-programmable-autonomous-robots-penn-today\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T07:10:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T07:10:22","slug":"the-worlds-smallest-programmable-autonomous-robots-penn-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-worlds-smallest-programmable-autonomous-robots-penn-today\/","title":{"rendered":"The world\u2019s smallest programmable, autonomous robots – Penn Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

2 min. read
Researchers at Penn\u2019s School of Engineering and Applied Science<\/a> and collaborators from the University of Michigan have created the world\u2019s smallest fully programmable, autonomous robots: microscopic swimming machines that can independently sense and respond to their surroundings, operate for months, and cost just a penny each.
Barely visible to the naked eye, each robot measures about 200 by 300 by 50 micrometers, smaller than a grain of salt. Operating at the scale of many biological microorganisms, the robots could advance medicine by monitoring the health of individual cells and manufacturing by helping construct microscale devices. Powered by light, the robots carry microscopic computers and can be programmed to move in complex patterns, sense local temperatures, and adjust their paths accordingly.
Published in Science Robotics<\/em><\/a> and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em><\/a>, the robots operate without tethers, magnetic fields, or joystick-like control from the outside, making them the first truly autonomous, programmable robots at this scale.
\u201cWe\u2019ve made autonomous robots 10,000 times smaller,\u201d says Marc Miskin<\/a>, assistant professor in electrical and systems engineering at Penn Engineering and the papers\u2019 senior author. \u201cThat opens up an entirely new scale for programmable robots.\u201d
The forces that dominate the human world, like gravity and inertia, depend on volume. Shrink down to the size of a cell, however, and forces tied to surface area, like drag and viscosity, take over. \u201cIf you\u2019re small enough, pushing on water is like pushing through tar,\u201d says Miskin.
At the microscale, strategies that move larger robots, like limbs, rarely succeed. So the team had to design an entirely new propulsion system, one that worked with\u2014rather than against\u2014the unique physics of locomotion in the microscopic realm.
Read more at Penn Engineering<\/a>.
Ian Scheffler<\/span>
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(Image: Bella Ciervo)
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source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2 min. read Researchers at Penn\u2019s School of Engineering and Applied Science and collaborators from the University of Michigan have created the world\u2019s smallest fully programmable, autonomous robots: microscopic swimming machines that can independently sense and respond to their surroundings, operate for months, and cost just a penny each.Barely visible to the naked eye, each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":194122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-194121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}