1mm Robot Gripper

Posted 1 Feb 2007 at 03:16 UTC by Rog-a-matic

The one-millimeter-wide gripper created in Prof. Chang-Jin Kim's Micromanufacturing lab at UCLA uses inflatable polymer balloons as actuators between a series of silicon wafers. Researchers are hoping this tiny device will come in handy for remote microsurgery applications in the next few years. Research also includes microscopic liquid-metal motors and other small actuators that might eventually power the incredibly small robots of our future.