This $900,000 National Science Foundation Project Grant supports research towards developing the first swarm of 10,000 electronically controlled, programmable robots no larger than a few hundred microns. Funded through the Engineering (47.041) program, this three-year award to The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania aims to significantly advance microrobotics by shrinking robot size tenfold and increasing swarm size ten times over the current state of the art. Key innovations include...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) project grant award of $731,541 to the Regents of the University of California at Riverside (UC Riverside) will create a new class of microfabricated mesoscale surgical robots with shape-memory alloy (SMA) actuators, integrated sensors, and advanced control algorithms. The goal is to develop soft robots capable of safely navigating within the human body and performing dexterous manipulation of soft tissue for minimally...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation awarded a $450,000 project grant to Michigan State University (MSU) to develop and analyze the motion of magnetically driven, sperm-like soft microrobots in nanofiber fluid suspensions with properties analogous to cervical mucus. The research aims to address key scientific and technological challenges in designing robotic systems for efficient swimming and maneuvering in biological fluids. The...
This five-year, $454,772 project grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems will fund foundational research at The University of Akron to develop a new class of biomimetic microrobots for applications in targeted therapeutics, environmental remediation, and microscale cargo delivery. Inspired by collective animal behaviors like schooling fish and flocking birds, the microrobots will utilize off-center repulsive...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award of $275,000 to North Carolina State University (NC State) aims to study the feasibility of using sound waves to remotely control and propel microrobots through blood vessels. The goal is to develop microrobots capable of delivering drugs and providing wireless electrical stimulation to the nervous system, without requiring invasive surgery. The research plan includes three key objectives: Investigating acoustic mechanisms to enable...
This $600,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (CFDA #47.070 - Computer and Information Science and Engineering) supports the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in developing a cyber physical system to remotely control cellular processes and create synthetic pancreatic tissue. The research aims to overcome challenges in recreating complex 3D tissue structures by using swarms of microrobots to regulate the...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) project grant under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) aims to develop the world's smallest functional bipedal robot, multi-legged robot, and wheeled robot, each approximately 100 times smaller than the current state-of-the-art. The $854,461 award to Carnegie Mellon University, spanning from September 1, 2024 to August 31, 2027, will establish scaling laws to understand how actuation, joint losses, and contact properties change at smaller scales. This...
This $622,769 National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award supports research at Vanderbilt University on developing miniature soft robots with magnetically controlled microfluidics for precision medicine applications. The objective is to create soft robots that can safely and precisely access confined spaces within the body to enable minimally invasive procedures like targeted drug delivery, on-site biofluid pumping, and liquid biopsies. The project will...
This $379,600 National Science Foundation project grant supports research at Columbia University to develop autonomous micro-robots for navigation in complex microscopic environments. Specifically, the university will design time-varying magnetic fields to encode autonomous behavior of magnetic microparticles in response to gradients in surface topography and fluid velocity. Researchers will experimentally demonstrate particle navigation across landscapes and in microfluidic channels, informed...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Early-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project under CFDA 47.041 Engineering aims to advance the field of magnetic soft robotics by demonstrating a proof-of-concept mechanism for independently actuating multiple small-scale soft robots using a single external magnetic field. The $171,015 award to Texas Tech University System, awarded on June 15, 2025, will fund the design, fabrication, and evaluation of a novel modular magnetic actuation...