Microrobotics, current of art and future

Abstract

This paper proposes the concept of micromachine, and presents the autonomous microrobot as an approach to develop the micromachine. Microdevices such as a microsensor, microactuator, and microprocessor are important for building an integrated microrobotic system, and are necessary for developing an autonomous microrobot. In this paper, we pay attention to not only the structure, but also the logic algorithm. A microrobot is considered to judge its motion based on restricted information and knowledge. The proposed autonomous microrobot, the "microline trace robot", consists of a pair of electromagnetic mobile actuators, a pair of infrared sensors, and a programmable logic device, and controls itself by the simple logic algorithm.