And Smaller Robots Yet

Only 5 microns in size, paramecium sized.    Likely applications in healthcare.  And?

Microscopic robots 'walk' thanks to laser tech  in TechXPlore
by Cornell University

A Cornell University-led collaboration has created the first microscopic robots that incorporate semiconductor components, allowing them to be controlled—and made to walk—with standard electronic signals.

These robots, roughly the size of paramecium, provide a template for building even more complex versions that utilize silicon-based intelligence, can be mass produced, and may someday travel through human tissue and blood.

The collaboration is led by Itai Cohen, professor of physics, Paul McEuen, the John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science and their former postdoctoral researcher Marc Miskin, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

The team's paper, "Electronically Integrated, Mass-Manufactured, Microscopic Robots," published in Nature.

The walking robots are the latest iteration, and in many ways an evolution, of Cohen and McEuen's previous nanoscale creations, from microscopic sensors to graphene-based origami machines. ... "

Electronically integrated, mass-manufactured, microscopic robots, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2626-9 ,  www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2626-9