Harvard's MilliDelta Robotics

Ultimately the very small may be more important than robots at human scale ...

Harvard's milliDelta Robot Is Tiny and Scary Fast    By Evan Ackerman

Harvard's milliDelta is a millimeter-scale delta robot based on origami-inspired engineering that can reach velocities of 0.45 m/s and accelerations of 215 m/s².

In terms of sheer speed and precision, delta robots are some of the most impressive to watch. They’re also some of the most useful, for the same reasons—you can see them doing pick-and-place tasks in factories of all kinds, far faster than humans can. The delta robots that we’re familiar with are mostly designed as human-replacement devices, but as it turns out, scaling them down makes them even more impressive. In Robert Wood’s Microrobotics Lab at Harvard, researcher Hayley McClintock has designed one of the tiniest delta robots ever. Called milliDelta, it may be small, but it’s one of the fastest moving and most precise robots we’ve ever seen. .... "

(Pics and video at the link)  ....