This project proposes to provide competitive travel support for student teams wishing to compete in the Mobile Micro-Robotics Challenge. The challenge involves advances in the design and fabrication of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) enabling the development of mobile micro-robots that can autonomously navigate and manipulate in controlled environments. It is expected that this technology will be critical in applications as varied as intelligent sensor networks, in vivo medical diagnosis and treatment, and adaptive microelectronics. However, many challenges remain, particularly with respect to locomotion, power storage, embedded intelligence, and motion measurement, therefore, it is valuable to help enable participation by defraying travel costs.
The broader impacts of this grant include the ability of research teams to showcase working demonstrations that support the challenge themes of micro-scale actuation, manipulation and locomotion. Travel assistance will increase the exposure of US student teams to international competitors, likely increasing the knowledge and competitiveness of the US-based teams since this event has traditionally been dominated by teams from Europe. The multi-day competitions will be held during the IEEE ICRA conference providing an excellent opportunity to engage a broad technical audience. The competitions are open to the general public to raise awareness of the state-of-the-art. The competitions provide an opportunity for students and leaders to learn how micro-robotics can play an important role in society.
The IEEE (Institute for Electronics and Electrical Engineers), through its Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) is the leading professional society for advancing robotics, and one of the premiere conferences in this technical area is the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) which was held in Karlsruhe, Germany in May 2013, and in Hong Kong in May - June 2014. For many years, ICRA has held a variety of competitions to demonstrate innovative research in robotics. This venue provides an exceptional opportunity for the robotics community to engage in a cooperative setting for students and researchers to promote robotics research in a hands-on way. To this end, the Mobile Micro-Robot Challenge provides a forum for teams from all over the world to demonstrate their state-of-the-art capabilities in micro-actuation and motion control. This project provided travel support for students from qualifying US academic institutions to allow them to participate in this event. A total of 8 students from four US institutions received travel funds to compete at MMC 2013 (Karlsruhe, Germany) and MMC 2014 (Hong Kong). As a result of this funding US teams placed on the podium in both 2013 and 2014. The MMC competitions include two events: the Mobility challenge, in which robots smaller than half a millimeter must navigate an obstacle course, and the Microassembly challenge, in which robots push and pull microscopic objects and assemble them into a narrow conduit. In 2013, teams from Carnegie-Mellon University and University of Texas at Arlington placed second and third, respectively in the Mobility Challenge. In 2014, teams from UT Arlington and University of Hawaii also placed second and third, respectively in the same event. And in 2014, the team from UT Arlington won the top spot in the Microassembly event alongside ETH Zurich, Switzerland. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), known between 1901 and 1988 as the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), the founder of the Mobile Microrobot Challenge is a measurement standards laboratory which is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. The institute's official mission is to: "promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve the quality of life." After the first 5 challenges, NIST handed over organizational responsibilities for the MMC to the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) technical committee in Micro-Nano Robotics. The Mobile Micro-Robotics Challenge involves advances in the design and fabrication of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) enabling the development of mobile micro-robots that can autonomously navigate and manipulate in controlled environments. It is expected that this technology will be critical in applications as varied as intelligent sensor networks, in vivo medical diagnosis and treatment, and adaptive microelectronics. However, many challenges remain, particularly with respect to locomotion, power storage, embedded intelligence, and motion measurement. As a result, the RAS-Micro-Nano TC has organized performance-based competitions for mobile micro-robots that are designed to: 1) motivate researchers to accelerate micro-robot development, including automation, 2) reveal the most pressing technical challenges, and 3) evaluate the most successful methods for locomotion, manipulation, and automation at the micro-scale (e.g., actuation techniques for crawling). Research teams showcased working demonstrations that support the challenge themes of micro-scale actuation, manipulation and locomotion. This funding increased the competitiveness of US teams, as this event had traditionally been dominated by teams from Europe. It tested research laboratory equipment that had to be custom designed, packed and shipped around the world, and demonstrated on the day of competition. The multi-day competitions provided an excellent opportunity for US students to meet other young professionals from other countries, and to engage with a broad technical audience. The schallenge were also open to the general public to raise awareness of the state-of-the-art, and results were widely disseminated in media articles at the team's home institutions. The competitions provided an opportunity for students and leaders to learn how micro-robotics can play an important role in society.
