Mobile microrobots : Microbots and Distributed Microactuators in Japan

This paper discusses suitable mechanisms and functions of a mobile microrobot from the point of view of scale effects. Several assumptions are made using animal scaling. A large scale model is shown to demonstrate these mechanisms. Moreover, microsized models have been built on silicon wafers by using polysilicon as rigid plates and polyimide as elastic joints. The results show that suitable mechanisms and functions may be different from those of a conventional robot.