(363j) Progress Toward Colloidal Robotics

A robot has components that work together to accomplish a task. Colloidal Robots (CRs) are autonomous particles capable of functions such as sensing, computation, communication, locomotion, and energy management while remaining dispersed in a surrounding fluid. Their design and synthesis is an emerging area of interdisciplinary research drawing from materials science, colloid science, robophysics, and control theory. Recent advances in nanofabrication enable the synthesis of colloidal particles that sense, compute, write to memory, and locomote. Concurrently, theoretical developments offer guidance on the minimum requirements for relatively simple machines to perform complex tasks. This talk examines the emerging literature and highlights certain design strategies toward the realization of CRs as well as potential applications for autonomous CRs.