{"id":227863,"date":"2025-12-26T05:26:35","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T11:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/researchers-create-worlds-smallest-programmable-autonomous-robots"},"modified":"2025-12-26T05:26:35","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T11:26:35","slug":"researchers-create-worlds-smallest-programmable-autonomous-robots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/researchers-create-worlds-smallest-programmable-autonomous-robots","title":{"rendered":"Researchers create world\u2019s smallest programmable, autonomous robots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-create-worlds-smallest-programmable-autonomous-robots.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan have created the world\u2019s smallest fully programmable, autonomous robots: microscopic swimming machines that can independently sense and respond to their surroundings, operate for months and cost just a penny each.<\/p>\n<p>Barely visible to the naked eye, each robot measures about 200 by 300 by 50 micrometers, smaller than a grain of salt. Operating at the scale of many biological microorganisms, the robots could advance medicine by <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2022-09-technology-medical-microrobots-minute-disintegrated.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\" target=\"_blank\">monitoring the health<\/a> of individual cells and manufacturing by helping construct microscale devices.<\/p>\n<p>Powered by light, the robots carry microscopic computers and can be programmed to move in complex patterns, sense local temperatures and adjust their paths accordingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan have created the world\u2019s smallest fully programmable, autonomous robots: microscopic swimming machines that can independently sense and respond to their surroundings, operate for months and cost just a penny each. Barely visible to the naked eye, each robot measures about 200 by 300 by 50 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227863","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}