Self-assembly of milli-scale robotic manipulators: A path to highly adaptive, robust automation systems

Today, trends in manufacturing automation favor high levels of adaptability and flexibility for rapid product change, customization, and new process integration. This paper looks at a new technology, diamagnetic micro manipulation (DM3), for taking adaptability of automation to a higher level. Experiments reported here show a path to automation systems that can self-assemble their own robotic manipulators, fabricate tools-on-demand to execute new processes, optimize existing processes, and/or replace or repair tools. These printed circuit board (PCB) systems can control very large numbers of milli-scale robots. Hence, as described in this paper and in contrast to conventional robotic systems, only a small percentage of DM3 system resources, approximately 5-10% of system area and robot numbers, are needed to achieve on-board self-assembly and tool-on-demand functions. This paper describes the key step of self-assembly of self-levitating magnet arrays using 1 mm × 1 mm × 0.4 mm magnets, with self-assembly times of less than 10 s. We also report experiments showing how milli-robots can build simple end effector tools (a straight probe tip, a forked tip, and a hook tip) on other milli-robots for on-board, tool-on-demand functions.