20 years of Microrobotics: progress, challenges, and future directions.

A Full Day Workshop at IROS 2011, San Francisco, CA

Workshop Organizers:

Dan Popa Multiscale Robotics And Systems Lab Dept. of Electrical Engineering The University of Texas at Arlington, USA Email: popa@uta.edu

Fumihito Arai Dept. of Micro-Nano Systems Engineering, Dept. of Mechanical Science & Engineering, Nagoya University, Japan E-mail: arai@mech.nagoya-u.ac.jp

September 25, 2011

IROS 2011 will feature a series of special symposia to celebrate the achievements of the last fifty years of robotics and to articulate a vision for the future of the field.

Micro and Nano Robotics is an emerging area with a tremendous potential to revolutionize manufacturing of nanostructures, nanosensors, and nanoactuators, and to enable new applications in medicine. We have organized a full day workshop with sessions based on 4 main applications areas, and under the main theme: 20 years of Microrobotics: progress, challenges, and future directions.This anniversary workshop is held in conjunction with the Symposium on Microrobotics organized by Sylvain Martel and David Cappelleri. Special symposia include 90 minute sessions consisting of invited talks and invited papers.

Our full day workshop will include18 (15+3) minute presentations by both junior and senior roboticists, from all three continents (Europe, Asia, North America). The purpose of the talks is to give a more general overview of important research challenges (past, current and future) in the field of micro and nano robotics, going beyond paper submissions to the special symposia.

Workshop summary and conclusions

Workshop Starts at 8:30 am

Motivation and Objectives - Organizers

Session 1: Micro assembly and manipulation for manufacturing at small scales 8:45-10:15 am

Robotics at small scales shares common similarities with its macro scale counterpart, however, there are also many differences which make robotic manufacturing methods more challenging and less robust. This session explores past breakthroughs, limitations, challenges and future directions in micro manipulation and assembly at small scales.

Invited Talks (18 minutes each), confirmed speakers:

- SW4-1-1: Philippe Lutz, Femto-St, France

- SW4-1-2: Dan Popa, UT Arlington, USA

- SW4-1-3: Ville Liimatainen/Quan Zhou, Aalto University, Finland

- SW4-1-4: David Cappelleri, Stevens Inst. of Technology, USA

- SW4-1-5: Karl F. Bohringer, Univ. of Washington, USA

Session 2: Nano manipulation/ Nano assembly 10:30am-12:00 pm

Robotics at nano scales small scales shares common similarities with its micro scale counterpart, however, there are also many differences due to significantly different physics at these scales. This session explores past breakthroughs, limitations, challenges and future directions in nano manipulation at small scales.

Invited talks (18 minutes each),confirmed speakers:

- SW4-2-1: Toshio Fukuda, Univ. of Nagoya, Japan

- SW4-2-2: Ari Requicha, USC, USA

- SW4-2-3: Christian Dahmen/Sergej Fatikow, Univ. of Oldenburg, Germany

- SW4-2-4: Stephane Regnier, Pierre and Marie Curie University, France

- SW4-2-5: Lixin Dong, Michigan State University, USA.

Session 3: Micro and Nano robotics in medicine and life sciences 1:15pm-3:00 pm

Micro and nano robots hold tremendous promise for healthcare applications of the future, given their ability to reach parts of the body previously unaccessible to surgeons, or their ability to manipulate living matter at the cellular level. This session will explore progress to date and future challenges in the design, characterization, fabrication, and use of micro and nano robots in healthcare.

Invited talks (18 minutes each), confirmed speakers:

- SW4-3-1: Fumihito Arai, Nagoya University, Japan

- SW4-3-2: Dimitris Felekis/Bradley Nelson, ETHZ, Switzerland

- SW4-3-3: Arianna Menciassi, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy

- SW4-3-4: Sylvain Martel, Polytechnic of Montreal, Canada

- SW4-3-5: Antoine Ferreira, ENSI, Bourges, France

- SW4-3-6: Tatsuo Arai, Osaka University, Japan

Session 4: Autonomous robotics at micro and nano scales 3:15pm-4:45pm

Autonomous microrobots are expected to play an increasingly important role in medicine, manufacturing, and remote sensing. The challenges in autonomous microrobotics include severe constraints in the design, fabrication and packaging these these tiny entities. Equally important are algorithms and deployment schemes for large numbers of micro and nano robots that are scalable and efficient in utilizing limited energy, sensing, computational and communication resources available. This session will explore progress to date and future challenges in mobile microrobotics.

Invited talks (18 minutes each), confirmed speakers:

-SW4-4-1: Sarah Bergbreiter, University of Maryland, USA

-SW4-4-2: Ashis Banerjee, MIT/S.K Gupta, Univ. of Maryland, USA

-SW4-4-3: Ron Fearing, UC. Berkeley, USA

-SW4-4-4: Metin Sitti, CMU, USA

-SW4-4-5: Igor Paprotny, UC Berkeley/Bruce Donald, Duke Univ., USA

4:45 pm: Conclusions and Summary - Participants

Workshop ends at 5:00pm.

Last updated, September 6, 2011.