MSRAL Competes in NIST Mobile Microrobotics Challenge at ICRA 2012

Post date: May 22, 2012 9:27:18 PM

The Mobile Microrobotics team of the MSRAL competed in the final round of the NIST Mobile Microrobotics Challenge held at IEEE ICRA 2012 in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA from May 14 - 18. The team was one of only 9 international teams to qualify for the final round of the challenge. Team MSRAL successfully completed both of the challenge events: 1. Mobility Challenge and 2. Microassembly Event.

In the Mobility Challenge, a microrobot must navigate a prescribed course through a planar track in the fastest possible time. The Microassembly event requires a microrobot to assemble multiple micro-scale components in a narrow channel. This event will simulate manipulation challenges found in in vivo medical applications, such as operation inside a human blood vessel, and assembly-based nanomanufacturing. Each competing team must furnish its own microrobots, which must operate wirelessly and fit within a 600-μm-diameter sphere.

The MSRAL team was able to navigate the course in Mobility challenge with the fifth best average time while it finished tied for third place in the Microassembly event. For more information on the competition please visit the competition website here:

http://www.nist.gov/el/isd/mmc/

The Mobile Microrobot team consists of students: Wuming Jing, Bona Bai, Sean Lyttle, Nick Pagano and Prof. Cappelleri