Extremely cool paper describing optically programmable ~0.3 mm robots with onboard computation and autonomous locomotion! These tiny rectangular machines carry solar cells, optical receivers, electrokinetic actuators, and more. As demonstrations, the authors programmed them (i) to report local temperature by doing a coded dance and (ii) swim towards warmth before stopping and rotating upon reaching a location with a certain level of heat. This is amazing and I hope such devices are further improved so they can be used in biological applications! Love it!
(https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adu8009)
Autonomous submillimeter robots are built with onboard sensing, computation, memory, communication, and locomotion.









