An optical system for communication and sensing in millimetre-sized swarming microrobots

Abstract

Microrobotic technology underlines the concept of top-down fabrication of autonomous or semi-autonomous robotic systems, with the final aim to produce autonomous micromachines. For millimetre-sized robots, all the sub-component modules must be conceived and designed as minimal components able to accomplish a specific basic task, and each of them consequently represents a fundamental part in the whole microrobotic system. Communication and sensing modules, in particular, are indispensable to the microrobot in order to physically interact with its neighbours and the surrounding environment, a fundamental feature for multi-agent or swarm robotic systems. At present, there exist no communication and sensing modules suitable to be integrated in millimetre-sized microrobots that fulfil the requirements of the application discussed in this paper. The objective of the paper is to present the development of an integrated and scalable miniaturized optical system for communication and sensing in swarming microrobots that are among the smallest ever reported. The system consists of optoelectronic devices in a die form, which are assembled on a substrate and encompassed in a mirroring polymeric structure. The final experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the optical module, and potential methods for further improving the system performance are finally proposed.

Evaluation of building technology for mass producible millimetre-sized robots using flexible printed circuit boards

“…The robots use free-space optical communication based on infrared (IR) photoemitters and photodiodes. A miniaturized optical system was fabricated to allow directional communication and the detection of the presence, position and orientation of the surrounding robots [26,27]. The IRcommunication module, seen in figure 4 top left, consists of a 3 × 3 mm 2 printed circuit board (PCB), composed of a 0.18 mm thick dark preimpregnated substrate, four photoemitter (LED) and four photodetector (PD) dies along the four borders of the PCB and finally four surface-mounted resistors (0201 type).…”

Integration of the control electronics for a mm³-sized autonomous microrobot into a single chip

“…The robot can communicate with other I-SWARM robots through a short IR link. It has an IR micro optical system composed of 4 channels to cover the four sides [19]. Each channel has a LED to transmit and photodiode to receive.…”

Assessing the Dynamic Performance of Microbots in Complex Fluid Flows

“…In this field, some research has been directed to the fabrication method of the microbot prototypes [15,16], to their control and propulsion [17][18][19][20][21][22], and to the study of their communication mechanisms [23][24][25]. It is well known that at a low-Reynolds number regime, non-reciprocal motion is required for a self-propelling device.…”