Smallest Robot?

Posted 27 Feb 2001 at 22:26 UTC by steve

Sandia National Labs claims to have developed the world's smallest autonomous robots. The mini-robots are about the size of a nickel and can travel at speeds of up to 20 inches per minute on tiny treads. A detailed press release as well as MPEG video is available from the Sandia Labs web site.

Autonomous?, posted 1 Mar 2001 at 05:34 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

It's a really cool little robot all right!

From watching the video it looks like it could roll over coins and all, but I didn't see it "maneuvering". On time on the video, it looked like it turned, but then I got to thinking it just got one of the tracks caught on a coin. When I think of autonomous I sort of think it should receive input and respond to input, perhaps navigate somehow. So far it just looked like the motors were going and that's all. I hardly call that autonomous. But it did look like it had the potential to do it if they tried. Perhaps we will see a revision 2 of the software sometime in the future?