MAE 298: Microscopic Robots that Sense, Act and Compute

Abstract: While miniaturization has been a goal in robotics for nearly 40 years, roboticists have struggled to access sub-millimeter dimensions without making sacrifices to on-board information processing. Instead, microrobots often lack the key features that distinguish their macroscopic cousins from other machines, namely on-robot systems for decision making, sensing, feedback and programmable computation. This talk is about bringing the power of semiconductor circuits to robots too small to see by eye. I’ll show how to fit memory, sensing, computing, actuation, power and communication systems into a single robot comparable in size to a paramecium. Using these circuits, each microrobot can carry out useful, autonomous behaviors like temperature reporting and gradient climbing without additional instructions or supervision. Finally, I’ll discuss some near term applications of smart, inexpensive, programmable microrobots, including peripheral nerve repair and nanomanufacturing.

Bio: Marc Miskin is an assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He received a bachelor's degree in physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and doctorate in physics from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the faculty at U. Penn, he was a Kavli Postdoctoral Fellow for Nanoscale Science at Cornell University. Currently, he is interested in the design and fabrication of microscopic robots. His work has won awards from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Office, NSF CAREER award, Sloan Research Fellowship, Packard fellowship and been featured in several media outlets, including the New York Times, the MIT Tech Review’s 35 under 35 list, the BBC and NPR. Outside of research, he is actively involved in science education, frequently presenting at science museums. He lives outside Philadelphia with his wife and two sons.