Our goal is to create a class of autonomous microrobots with a volume of less than 1cm3. We previously reported an autonomous micromachined silicon legged robot which took its first steps. The body of the robot was fabricated in a planarized silicon-on-insulator (SOI), two-layer polysilicon process and was 8 mm x 4 mm x 0.3 mm in size. The complete robot had two additional ICs, a solar cell and high voltage buffer chip along with a low-voltage CMOS chip for sequencing. However, due to the processing complexity and fragility of these robots, we are investigating new processing and design directions. To this end, we have focused on providing jumping mechanisms to microrobots in a simple relatively simple and robust SOI process.
Project end date: 01/28/08