A Swiss team of researchers gained a robot-like competition of
football thanks to a device of a few microns. Of this invention could emerge of
new applications, in particular in
BioMicroRobotics.
Organized for the first time this year, Nanogram league, foot ballistic competition of RoboCup
2007, devoted the victory of a Swiss robot measuring just 300 microns out of 300. To carry it, the researcher Dominic Frutiger of the ETH Zurich Institute of Robotics and
Intelligent Systems (IRIS) and its fellow-members have to carry out true technological exploits. The prerequisite were important: the robots in string were indeed to draw their energy from the environment and could be connected to no cable. Moreover, these robot-like players had as a constraint to carry out their displacements automatically, in all autonomy.
Football with medicine
The Zurichoise team illustrated itself with a device which can be driven, without engine, while being based on the force of attraction generated by two polarized blocks of nickel to which it applied an adapted magnetic field. Compound with an electrostatic process, the microphone-robot could thus be moved at constant speed and in a controllable way. The technologies applied to this robot footballer could be re-used in other fields such as biomedicine. The researchers in particular evoked the possibility of creating autonomous robots nanometric.
A robot-syringe
They could circulate in blood, find a body or a target vessel to manage a drug locally there. For the small history, three challenges were launched to the participants during Robocup 2007: a race of two millimeters towards the unfavorable goal, of the obstacles with dribbler and finally a maximum of goals to mark, the whole in less than three minutes. With final, the invention of the Swiss team was shown very handy but also very fast. She could for example cover 1,25 centimeters, that is to say nearly 40 times her size, this, in only one second. Another asset, this process could be repeated with the envy.
