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Rakesh Murthy – Making It Small

Most people dream about making it big; Electrical Engineering doctoral student Rakesh Murthy wants to make it small. He’s developing micrometer-sized robots at the Automation & Robotics Research Institute’s Texas MicrofactoryTM.

Rakesh created macro-scale (visible to the naked eye) robotic systems while earning a master’s degree at UT Arlington in 2005 and continued here to conduct further research on small robotic devices. He expects to receive his Ph.D. this fall. For the past three years, he has successfully created microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) that he hopes will be used to create even smaller devices. MEMS devices are increasingly being studied for use in areas such as medical applications, defense, the detection of biological and chemical materials, and manufacturing.

“I started out with devices that were in the 10 millimeter by 10 millimeter range,” he said. “And now I’ve been able to make them as small as 2 millimeters by 3 millimeters. That’s a major improvement, but I’m shooting for something even smaller.” Rakesh’s most recent achievements are a micro-crawler he calls the “ARRIpede” and a micro-robot called the Articulated Four Axes Microrobot (AFAM), which has an articulated arm. With them, he intends to configure a nanofactory that will produce nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS).

The ARRIpede is a six-legged crawler that Rakesh made to transport parts among stations within the nano-factory. The AFAM robots have four axis of movement, able to pick and place extremely small parts. “I want the crawler take things such as nanowires and nanotubes – parts in the 10-to-100 nanometer range – from point A to point B, where micro-robots with articulated positioners will use the parts to assemble the NEMS,” he said.

To reach his goal, Rakesh has to overcome some existing restrictions. One is the size of the battery powering the crawlers; it is the largest and heaviest piece in the system. “I need to find a novel source of power that will allow me to reduce the overall size of the ARRIpede,” he said. He must also find better ways to conserve power consumption in the various micromechanical and electrical modules.

There is one fortunate aspect of his creations, however; they are made using existing silicon technologies. “They’re sort of two-and-a-half-D parts,” he said. “Microassembly combined with simple fabrication techniques is a great micromanufacturing technique.”

Both the ARRIpede and the AFAM were developed using a grant from the Office of Naval Research. Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering Dan Popa, Rakesh’s Ph.D. supervisor, is also involved in the development of the robots. Together, they will improve the current designs and add improvements such as increasing the crawler’s speed and steering abilities and the reliability of the articulated arm.