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MICROROBOTICS

Embodied intelligence weaves a better future

Nature Machine Intelligence volume 2, pages 663–664 (2020)Cite this article

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Microrobots can interact intelligently with their environment and complete specific tasks by well-designed incorporation of responsive materials. Recent work demonstrates how swarms of microbots with specifically tuned surface chemistry can remove a hormone pollutant from a solution by coalescing it into a web.

An essential goal for the study of machine intelligence is the design of artificial agents that can fulfill specific missions efficiently with an integrated capability to perceive the environment and take actions accordingly. In the field of robotics, such intelligence is commonly embodied through sophisticated physical and algorithmic design, aiming to mimic the cognitive functions of natural living systems. When it comes to robots at micro- or nanometer scale, which hold promising potential in environmental and medical applications, the challenge lies in the miniaturization and assembly of functional hardware. Writing in Nature Machine Intelligence, Dekanovsky and colleagues address that challenge by designing a microrobot with chemically encoded intelligence1, for the efficient removal of hormonal pollutants.

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Fig. 1: Chemically programmable microrobots weaving a web from hormones.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin NT, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Dongdong Jin & Li Zhang

  2. Multiscale Medical Robotics Centre (MRC), InnoHK, Hong Kong Science Park, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Li Zhang

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  1. Dongdong Jin
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  2. Li Zhang
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Correspondence to Li Zhang.

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Jin, D., Zhang, L. Embodied intelligence weaves a better future. Nat Mach Intell 2, 663–664 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-00250-6

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