Micro- and nano-scale robotics

Abstract

Micro- and nano-scale robotics has become a new emerging area of systems and controls area. These miniature robots have unique advantages such as accessing to unprecedented and small areas, increased flexibility, functionality and robustness, and being low cost, many (swarms), adaptive and distributed. The locomotion and manipulation dynamics of these robots are dominated by micro/nano-scale forces and the scaling effects. The long-term target is the miniaturization of these robots down to micrometers size. However, these robots have sizes from tens of centimeters down to millimeters due to limited miniaturization and integration capabilities of available power sources, communication, control and computation schemes and tools, and coarse to fine motion mechanisms, sensors, manipulators, and actuators. This tutorial addresses the research challenges and future directions for these robots with many case studies such as scanning probe microscope dynamics and control, nano-scale manipulation and assembly, human-machine interfacing, and miniature surgical micro/nano-robots.