Video: Micro-Robots Made of Bubbles That Are Powered by Lasers | Popular Science: Using nothing more than a fine-tipped syringe filled with air and saline solution, Ohta and his colleagues in the U.H. Department of Electrical Engineering have created a system that uses a 400 mW infrared laser to propel bubbles around their environment. The laser is shone straight through the bubble, where it heats the far side...
The velocity of the bubbles correlates to the intensity of the laser, so speed can be manipulated by dialing the laser up or down...
Unlike other micromechanical machines, which are often controlled by magnetic fields, they are also independently steerable--each bubble simply requires its own laser source. Where a swarm of microbots controlled via magnetism would tend to clump together as they respond to a common magnetic field, the laser-controlled bubble-bots can be steered separately with an array of infrared lasers.
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