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Cornell University physics researchers have made robots that can, for the first time, sense the temperature of their surroundings and react together to change it. "Little things can have a large impact," said Itai Cohen, a leader in developing microscopic robots and a corresponding author on the study.

This is the first example of microscopic robots that can alter their physical environment, pumping liquid from hot regions to cold regions or vice versa. Three key capabilities—environmental sensing, fluid manipulation through artificial cilia and communication among microchips—create a feedback loop inspired by systems in nature that could be used in future medical or agricultural applications.

These robots combine previous robots' skill sets. In recent studies, Cohen and his lab have developed robots a hair's breadth in diameter that walk autonomously, sense their environment, make images and measurements, and communicate with each other.

"We're building out the repertoire of things these robots can do," Cohen said. "The idea here is, how do we get them to work together to achieve big manipulations of their environment, and this is a first step."

"Microscopic Robots that Sense and Reshape Their Environment" is published in Nature Electronics.

The robot "cilia" are inspired by the fluid-pumping principle of natural cilia, postdoctoral researcher and co-first author Jinsong Zhang said. But rather than directly replicating their structure, the researchers designed a more efficient two-hinge architecture that can be readily programmed by electronic signals.

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