METHANOL AS A POWERFUL ENERGY SOURCE FOR MICROROBOTS
The University of Southern California successfully develops the first methanol-powered micro robots
Micro robots could be used in many situations where humans or large robots are not suitable. When inspecting buildings, for example, looking for buried subjects or when monitoring the environment. But so far there has been no robot weighing less than one gram that can completely autonomously perform all the steps in a complex task that is difficult to manage or useful for humans, say the researchers working with Néstor Pérez-Arancibia from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
The vision of creating completely autonomous artificial insects can only become a reality when various long-standing difficulties have been overcome. A major problem for miniature robotics: on a scale of millimeters or micrometers, robots can only be inadequately equipped with their own energy supply, computing capacity or sensors.
An American research group has now made progress in energy supply. Pérez-Arancibia's team uses methanol to supply and drive a beetle-like robot with energy.
