A Harvard team in the United States designed a new kind of miniaturized robot that combines micrometer precision with high speed.
The new design, reported in Science Robotics on Wednesday, integrates a microfabrication technique inspired by origami with high-performance composite materials that can incorporate flexural joints and bending actuators.
The robot "milliDelta," developed by Robert Wood's team from Harvard University, is a kind of Delta robots that use three individually controlled and lightweight arms that guide a platform to move fast and accurately in three directions.
It can operate with high speed, force, and micrometer precision, which make it compatible with a range of micromanipulation tasks in manufacturing and medicine.
Wood's team developed in 2011 the origami-inspired approach that enables the assembly of robots from flat sheets of composite materials, but at that time they are in the centimeter-scale. In their new study, the researchers applied their approach to develop a robot measuring a mere 15 millimeters by 15 millimeters by 20 millimeters.
Its design incorporates a composite laminate structure with embedded flexural joints that approximate the more complicated joints found in large scale Delta robots.
Wood's team demonstrated that the robot can operate in a workspace of about seven cubic millimeters, making it ideal for micromanipulations in industrial pick-and-place processes and microscopic surgeries such as retinal microsurgeries performed on the human eye.
The researchers think that specialized robots could either be added on to existing robotic devices, or be developed as standalone devices like, for example, platforms for the manipulation of cells in research and clinical laboratories.
