Tiny robots with giant potential

Mark Miskin: This is ??.

It's a microorganism
about a hair's width in size.

They live everywhere on earth,

saltwater, freshwater, everywhere,

and this one is out looking for food.

So I remember the first time
I saw this thing,

I was like eight years old
and it completely blew me away.

I mean, here is this
incredible little creature,

it's hunting, swimming,

going about its life,

but its whole universe fits
within a drop of pond water.

Paul McEuen: So this little ??
shows us something really amazing.

It says that you can build a machine

that is functional, complex, smart

but all in a tiny little package,

one so small that
it's impossible to see it.

Now, the engineer in me
is just blown away by this thing,

that anyone could make such a creature,

but right behind that wonder
I have to admit is a bit of envy.

I mean, nature can do it. Why can't we?

Why can't we build tiny robots?

Well, I'm not the only one
to have this idea.

In fact, in the last, oh, few years,

researchers around the world
have taken up the task

of trying to build robots

that are so small that they can't be seen.

And what we're going
to tell you about today

is an effort at Cornell University

and now at the University of Pennsylvania

to try to build tiny robots.

OK, so that's the goal.

But how do we do it?

How do we go about building tiny robots?

Well, Pablo Picasso, of all people,
gives us our first clue.

Picasso said, "Good artists copy.
Great artists steal."

(Laughter)

OK. But steal from what?

Well, believe it or not,

most of the technology you need
to build a tiny robot already exists.

The semiconductor industry
has been getting better and better

at making tinier and tinier devices,

so at this point they could put
something like a million transistors

into the size of a package
that is occupied by, say,

a single-celled paramecium.

And it's not just electronics.

They can also build little sensors,

LEDs,

whole communication packages
that are too small to be seen.

So that's what we're going to do.

We're going to steal that technology.

Here's a robot.

(Laughter)

Robot's got two parts, as it turns out.

It's got a head, and it's got legs.

[Steal these] (Laughter)

We're going to call this a legless robot,

which may sound exotic,

but they're pretty cool all by themselves.

In fact, most of you have
a legless robot with you right now.

Your smartphone is the world's
most successful legless robot.

In just 15 years, it has
taken over the entire planet.

And why not?

It's such a beautiful little machine.

It's incredibly intelligent,

it's got great communication skills,

and it's all in a package
that you can hold in your hand.

So we would like to be able
to build something like this,

only down at the cellular scale,

the size of a paramecium.

And here it is.

This is our cell-sized smartphone.

It even kind of looks like a smartphone,

only it's about 10,000 times smaller,

and we call an OWIC,

for Optically Wired Integrated Circuit.

OK, we're not advertisers, alright?

(Laughter)

But it's pretty cool by itself.

In fact, this OWIC has a number of parts.

So up near the top,

there are these cool little solar cells
that you shine light of the device

and it wakes up a little circuit
that's there in the middle.

And that circuit can drive
a little tiny LED

that can blink at you and allows
the OWIC to communicate with you.

So unlike your cell phone,

the OWIC communicates with light,

sort of like a tiny firefly.

Now, one thing that's pretty cool
about these OWICs

is we don't make them one at a time,

soldering all the pieces together.

We make them in massive parallel.

For example, about a million
of these OWICs

can fit on a single four-inch wafer,

and just like your phone
has different apps,

you can have different kinds of OWICs.

There can be ones that, say,
measure voltage,

some that measure temperature,

or just have a little light that can blink
at you to tell you that it's there.

So that's pretty cool,

these tiny little devices,

and I'd like to tell you about them
in a little more detail.

But first, I have to tell you
about something else.

I'm going to tell you a few things
about pennies that you might not know.

So this one is a little bit older penny.

It's got a picture of
the Lincoln Memorial on the back.

But the first thing you might not know,

that if you zoom in, you'll find
in the center of this thing

you can actually see Abraham Lincoln,

just like in the real Lincoln Memorial
not so far from here.

What I'm sure you don't know,

that if you zoom in even further

you'll see that there's actually
an OWIC on Abe Lincoln's chest.

(Laughter)

But the cool thing is,

you could stare at this all day long
and you would never see it.

It's invisible to the naked eye.

These OWICs are so small,

and we make them in such parallel fashion,

that each OWIC costs actually
less than a penny.

In fact, the most expensive thing
in this demo is that little sticker

that says "OWIC."

(Laughter)

That cost about eight cents.

(Laughter)

Now, we're very excited about
these things for all sorts of reasons.

For example, we can use them
as little tiny secure smart tags,

more identifying than a fingerprint.

We're actually putting them inside
of other medical instruments

to give other information,

and even starting to think about
putting them in the brain

to listen to neurons one at a time.

In fact, there's only one thing
wrong with these OWICs.

It's not a robot. It's just a head.

And I think we'll all agree

that half a robot
really isn't a robot at all.

Without the legs,
we've got basically nothing.

MM: OK, so you need the legs too
if you want to build a robot.

Now, here it turns out
you can't just steal

some preexisting technology.

If you want legs for your tiny robot,
you need actuators, parts that move.

Now, they have to satisfy
a lot of different requirements.

So, for example, they need
to be low voltage.

They need to be low power too.

But most importantly,
they have to be small.

If you want to build a cell-sized robot,
you need cell-sized legs.

Now, nobody knows how to build that.

There was no preexisting technology
that meets all of those demands.

To make our legs for our tiny robots,

we had to make something new.

So here's what we built.

This is one of our actuators,
and I'm applying a voltage to it.

When I do, you can see
the actuator respond by curling up.

Now, this might not look like much,

but if we were to put a red blood cell
up on the screen, it'd be about that big,

so these are unbelievably tiny curls.

They're unbelievably small,

and yet this device can just bend
and unbend, no problem, nothing breaks.