Designing and building robots at the millimeter scale is difficult. With minimum feature sizes on the order of 100μm, millirobots require precise machining techniques, novel fabrication approaches, and careful final assembly by hand. The smart composites microstructures paradigm is enabling technology for integrated millirobotic systems at small scales, but it can be mimicked inexpensively at larger scales (2-5X) for prototyping articulated, folded robots. This project makes use of inexpensive materials and fast fabrication processes to produce a fully functional robot prototype in about 1 hour.

Building autonomous, legged millirobots presents unique challenges. Robotic designs must be highly integrated in order to satisfy the myriad constraints that accompany this difficult size scale. Using a novel process that incorporates compliant mechanisms, high strength/lightweight composites, shape memory alloy actuators, and low complexity electronics, we have developed the Robotic Autonomous Crawling Hexapod (RoACH) pictured to the right. Its unique parallel kinematics and lightweight, articulated skeleton combine with high power density actuation and reduced complexity power and control electronics to create a 2.4 gram robot capable of steerable autonomous locomotion at a rate of 1 body length/sec for up to 9.5 minutes on a single charge. For more details, read our IROS 2008 paper, RoACH: An autonomous 2.,4g crawling hexapod which was nominated for a conference "Best Application Paper" award.