{"id":173438,"date":"2023-10-04T10:24:01","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T15:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/millimobile-is-a-tiny-self-driving-robot-powered-only-by-light-and-radio-waves"},"modified":"2023-10-04T10:24:01","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T15:24:01","slug":"millimobile-is-a-tiny-self-driving-robot-powered-only-by-light-and-radio-waves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/millimobile-is-a-tiny-self-driving-robot-powered-only-by-light-and-radio-waves","title":{"rendered":"MilliMobile is a tiny, self-driving robot powered only by light and radio waves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/millimobile-is-a-tiny-self-driving-robot-powered-only-by-light-and-radio-waves2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Small mobile robots carrying sensors could perform tasks like catching gas leaks or tracking warehouse inventory. But moving robots demands a lot of energy, and batteries, the typical power source, limit lifetime and raise environmental concerns. Researchers have explored various alternatives: affixing sensors to insects, keeping charging mats nearby, or powering the robots with lasers. Each has drawbacks: Insects roam, chargers limit range, and lasers can burn people\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Washington have now created MilliMobile, a tiny, self-driving robot powered only by surrounding light or radio waves. Equipped with a solar panel-like energy harvester and four wheels, MilliMobile is about the size of a penny, weighs as much as a raisin and can move about the length of a bus (30 feet, or 10 meters) in an hour even on a cloudy day. The robot can drive on surfaces such as concrete or packed soil and carry three times its own weight in equipment like a camera or sensors. It uses a <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/light+sensor\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">light sensor<\/a> to move automatically toward light sources so it can run indefinitely on harvested power.<\/p>\n<p>The team will present <a href=\"https:\/\/homes.cs.washington.edu\/~vsiyer\/Papers\/millimobile-compressed.pdf\">its research<\/a> Oct. 2 at the <a href=\"https:\/\/sigmobile.org\/mobicom\/2023\/\">ACM MobiCom 2023 conference<\/a> in Madrid, Spain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Small mobile robots carrying sensors could perform tasks like catching gas leaks or tracking warehouse inventory. But moving robots demands a lot of energy, and batteries, the typical power source, limit lifetime and raise environmental concerns. Researchers have explored various alternatives: affixing sensors to insects, keeping charging mats nearby, or powering the robots with lasers. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1633,17,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai","category-solar-power","category-sustainability","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}