My students and I work on very tiny robots. Now, you can think of these as robotic versions of something that you're all very familiar with: an ant. We all know that ants and other insects at this size scale can do some pretty incredible things. We've all seen a group of ants, or some version of that, carting off your potato chip at a picnic, for example.
Moji studenti i ja radimo na veoma malim robotima. Možete ih smatrati robotičkim verzijama nečega što vam je veoma poznato: mrav. Svi znamo da mravi i drugi insekti ove veličine mogu da urade gotovo neverovatne stvari. Svi smo videli grupu mrava, ili neki oblik toga, kako mili po vašem čipsu na pikniku, na primer.
But what are the real challenges of engineering these ants? Well, first of all, how do we get the capabilities of an ant in a robot at the same size scale? Well, first we need to figure out how to make them move when they're so small. We need mechanisms like legs and efficient motors in order to support that locomotion, and we need the sensors, power and control in order to pull everything together in a semi-intelligent ant robot. And finally, to make these things really functional, we want a lot of them working together in order to do bigger things.
Ali koji su pravi izazovi pri konstruisanju ovih mrava? Pre svega, kako da ostvarimo sposobnost mrava u robotu iste veličine? Prvo treba da shvatimo kako ih pokrenuti kada su toliko mali. Treba nam mehanizam poput nogu i efikasnih motora kako bi potpomogli to kretanje, i trebaju nam senzori, struja i kontrola kako bismo sve sastavili u poluinteligentnog robota mrava. I na kraju, da bismo učinili ove stvari funkcionalnim, želimo da dosta njih funkcioniše skladno kako bi postigli više.
So I'll start with mobility. Insects move around amazingly well. This video is from UC Berkeley. It shows a cockroach moving over incredibly rough terrain without tipping over, and it's able to do this because its legs are a combination of rigid materials, which is what we traditionally use to make robots, and soft materials. Jumping is another really interesting way to get around when you're very small. So these insects store energy in a spring and release that really quickly to get the high power they need to jump out of water, for example.
Počeću sa pokretljivošću. Insekti se neverovatno dobro kreću. Ovo je video sa Berklija. On prikazuje bubašvabu kako se kreće po neverovatno teškom terenu bez prevrtanja, a ovo može da uradi jer su joj noge sačinjenje od kombinacije čvrstih materijala, koje tradicionalno koistimo za pravljenje robota, i mekih materijala. Skakanje je drugi veoma interesantan način kretanja kada ste sićušni. Ovi insekti energiju skladište u odskoku i oslobađaju je veoma brzo da bi imali dosta snage koja im je potrebna da iskoče iz vode, na primer.
So one of the big contributions from my lab has been to combine rigid and soft materials in very, very small mechanisms. So this jumping mechanism is about four millimeters on a side, so really tiny. The hard material here is silicon, and the soft material is silicone rubber. And the basic idea is that we're going to compress this, store energy in the springs, and then release it to jump. So there's no motors on board this right now, no power. This is actuated with a method that we call in my lab "graduate student with tweezers." (Laughter) So what you'll see in the next video is this guy doing amazingly well for its jumps. So this is Aaron, the graduate student in question, with the tweezers, and what you see is this four-millimeter-sized mechanism jumping almost 40 centimeters high. That's almost 100 times its own length. And it survives, bounces on the table, it's incredibly robust, and of course survives quite well until we lose it because it's very tiny.
Jedan od velikih doprinosa iz moje laboratorije bio je kombinovanje tvrdih i mekih materijala, u veoma, veoma malim mehanizmima. Ovaj skačući mehanizam je prečnika četiri milimetara, dakle veoma je mali. Tvrdi materijal je ovde silikon, a meki materijal je silikonska gumica. Osnovni plan je da ovo kompresujemo, smestimo energiju u federe, a onda je pustimo da skače. Dakle, trenutno nema nikakvih motora niti struje. Ovo je podstaknuto metodom koju u mojoj laboratoriji zovemo "diplomac sa pincetom" (Smeh) Ono što ćete videti u narednom videu je ovaj momak koji radi iznenađujuće dobar skok. Ovo je Eron, diplomac sa pincetama, i to što vidite je mehanizam veličine četiri milimetara kako skače skoro 40 centimetara u visinu. To je skoro 100 puta više od njegove dužine. I preživljava, odbija se o sto, neverovatno je otporan, i naravno preživljava dobro dok ga ne izgubimo jer je veoma mali.
Ultimately, though, we want to add motors to this too, and we have students in the lab working on millimeter-sized motors to eventually integrate onto small, autonomous robots. But in order to look at mobility and locomotion at this size scale to start, we're cheating and using magnets. So this shows what would eventually be part of a micro-robot leg, and you can see the silicone rubber joints and there's an embedded magnet that's being moved around by an external magnetic field.
Na kraju želimo da dodamo motore ovome, i imamo studente u laboratoriji koji rade na motorima milimetarske veličine koji bi se na kraju integrisali u male, autonomne robote. Ali da bismo posmatrali mobilnost i kretanje na ovoj veličini, moramo da varamo i koristimo magnete. Ovo pokazuje ono što će na kraju biti deo mikro-robotske noge, i možete videti zglobove od silikonske gume i tu je i utisnuti magnet koji se pokreće spoljašnjim magnetnim poljem.
So this leads to the robot that I showed you earlier. The really interesting thing that this robot can help us figure out is how insects move at this scale. We have a really good model for how everything from a cockroach up to an elephant moves. We all move in this kind of bouncy way when we run. But when I'm really small, the forces between my feet and the ground are going to affect my locomotion a lot more than my mass, which is what causes that bouncy motion. So this guy doesn't work quite yet, but we do have slightly larger versions that do run around. So this is about a centimeter cubed, a centimeter on a side, so very tiny, and we've gotten this to run about 10 body lengths per second, so 10 centimeters per second. It's pretty quick for a little, small guy, and that's really only limited by our test setup. But this gives you some idea of how it works right now. We can also make 3D-printed versions of this that can climb over obstacles, a lot like the cockroach that you saw earlier.
Ovo dovodi do robota kojeg sam vam pokazala. Istinski zanimljiva stvar je da ovaj robot može da nam pomogne da shvatimo kako se insekti kreću u toj veličini. Imamo stvarno dobar model za kretanje svega od bubašvabe pa do slona. Svi se krećemo na ovaj poskakujući način kada trčimo. Ali kada sam stvarno mala, sile među mojim stopalima i zemljom uticaće na moju pokretljivost mnogo više nego moja masa, što uzrokuje skačuće kretanje. Ovaj momak još uvek ne funkcioniše, ali imamo malo veće verzije koje trče unaokolo. Ovo je veličine jednog kubnog centimetra, dakle veoma maleno, i došli smo do trčanja brzinom 10 telesnih dužina po sekundi, što je 10 centimetara po sekundi. Ovo je prilično brzo za mališu, i ograničen je samo našom test postavkom. Ipak, ovo vam daje ideju kako to trenutno funkcioniše. Možemo i da napravimo 3D štampane verzije ovog robta koji može da prebrodi prepreke, poput bubašvabe koju ste prethodno videli.
But ultimately we want to add everything onboard the robot. We want sensing, power, control, actuation all together, and not everything needs to be bio-inspired. So this robot's about the size of a Tic Tac. And in this case, instead of magnets or muscles to move this around, we use rockets. So this is a micro-fabricated energetic material, and we can create tiny pixels of this, and we can put one of these pixels on the belly of this robot, and this robot, then, is going to jump when it senses an increase in light.
Na kraju želimo da dodamo sve na telo robota. Želimo čulnost, struju, kontrolu, impulse sve zajedno, ali ne treba sve da bude inspirisano prirodom. Ovaj robot veličine je Tiktaka. U ovom slučaju, umesto magneta ili mišića za pokretanje, koristimo rakete. Ovo je mikroskopski energetski materijal, i možemo da napravimo male piksele, i možemo da stavimo jedan od tih piksela na stomak ovog robota, a zatim će on odskočiti kada oseti pojačanje svetla.
So the next video is one of my favorites. So you have this 300-milligram robot jumping about eight centimeters in the air. It's only four by four by seven millimeters in size. And you'll see a big flash at the beginning when the energetic is set off, and the robot tumbling through the air. So there was that big flash, and you can see the robot jumping up through the air. So there's no tethers on this, no wires connecting to this. Everything is onboard, and it jumped in response to the student just flicking on a desk lamp next to it.
Sledeći video je jedan od mojih omiljenih. Imate ovog robota od 300 miligrama koji skače oko osam centimetara u visinu. Veličine je samo 4x4x7 milimetara. Videćete veliki odsjaj na početku kada se oslobodi energetski potencijal, i robot se kreće kroz vazduh. Tu je taj veliki odsjaj i možete videti robota kako skače kroz vazduh. Nema povodaca niti žica povezanih na ovo. Sve je na samom robotu i on je skočio reagujući na stonu lampu koju uključuje student pored njega.
So I think you can imagine all the cool things that we could do with robots that can run and crawl and jump and roll at this size scale. Imagine the rubble that you get after a natural disaster like an earthquake. Imagine these small robots running through that rubble to look for survivors. Or imagine a lot of small robots running around a bridge in order to inspect it and make sure it's safe so you don't get collapses like this, which happened outside of Minneapolis in 2007. Or just imagine what you could do if you had robots that could swim through your blood. Right? "Fantastic Voyage," Isaac Asimov. Or they could operate without having to cut you open in the first place. Or we could radically change the way we build things if we have our tiny robots work the same way that termites do, and they build these incredible eight-meter-high mounds, effectively well ventilated apartment buildings for other termites in Africa and Australia.
Mislim da možete da zamislite sve fine stvari koje bismo mogli da uradimo sa robotima koji mogu da trče, puze, skaču i kotrljaju se na ovoj veličini. Zamislite ruševine nakon prirodne katastrofe poput zemljotresa. Zamislite ove male robote kako trče kroz taj šljunak da bi pronašli preživele. Ili zamislite gomilu malih robota kako trče oko mosta kako bi ga istražili i proverili da li je siguran da ne biste imali lomove poput ovih, što se desilo u predgrađu Mineapolisa 2007. godine. Ili samo zamislite šta biste mogli da uradite kad biste imali robote koji mogu da plivaju kroz vašu krv. Zar ne? "Fantastično putovanje", Isaka Asimova. Ili bi mogli da operišu, a da vas uopšte ne otvaraju. Ili bismo mogli da drastično promenimo način na koji gradimo stvari da naši mali roboti rade isto što i termiti, i grade ove neverovatne nasipe visine osam metara, dobro ventilisane zgrade za druge termite u Africi i Australiji.
So I think I've given you some of the possibilities of what we can do with these small robots. And we've made some advances so far, but there's still a long way to go, and hopefully some of you can contribute to that destination.
Stoga mislim da sam vam dala neke mogućnosti onoga što možemo da učinimo sa ovim malim robotima. I do sada smo ostvarili određene napretke, ali predstoji nam dugačak put, i nadam se neki od vas mogu da doprinesu ka toj destinaciji.
Thanks very much.
Hvala vam mnogo.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)