Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)

Assembly at the microscale involves manipulation of one or more components relative to another in order to create a microstructure or device composed of these two or more components that would be difficult or impossible to monolithically fabricate. One specific class of problems that is well suited to microassembly rather than microfabrication is the creation of very high aspect ratio out-of-plane microstructures. As size and complexity of these out-of-plane microstructures grows, it becomes compelling if not necessary to automate the device assembly. To this end, we are developing...

We present a 32-channel carbon fiber monofilament-based intracortical neural recording array fabricated through a combination of bulk silicon microfabrication processing and microassembly. This device represents the first truly two-dimensional carbon fiber neural recording array. The five-micron diameter fibers are spaced at a pitch of 38 microns, four times denser than the state of the art one-dimensional arrays. The fine diameter of the carbon fiber microwires affords both minimal cross-section and nearly three orders of magnitude greater lateral compliance than standard tungsten...

In developing micro-robots for exploration in non-uniform terrain, it is often the case that robots fall over. This work seeks to provide a solution in the self-righting of autonomous micro- robots to overturn a 1cc, 1 gram cube microrobot with regular octahedral symmetry that has fallen on either of its four sides and overturning said microrobot once upside down. Here, a slider 3- bar linkage is used in conjunction with MEMS inchworm motors, capable of producing approx 15uN force output, to sweep the lifting arm and push the cube microrobot to be...

As the size, cost, power, and communication latency of wireless sensor nodes continues to decrease, wireless sensor networks have the potential to be used in a variety of new and interesting ways. In this project we aim to demonstrate applications and use cases that are possible with small, low power, and low latency networks; for example, collecting high-resolution personal telemetry via products with embedded sensor networks, networked autonomous robotic systems, smart buildings, and industrial process control. While this project utilizes custom 15mmx15mm wireless sensor...