Planar Microassembly by Parallel Actuation of MEMS Microrobots

(Supporting Material and PDF of Paper)



Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, 17(4): 789-808. J.MEMS

Bruce R. Donalda,b,*, Christopher Leveyc, and Igor Paprotnyd,a

aDepartment of Computer Science, Duke University, Durham NC 27708
bDepartment of Biochemistry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham NC 27708
cThayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH 03755
dDepartment of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH 03755

*Corresponding Author:
Bruce R. Donald
Department of Computer Science
Duke University
Department of Biochemistry
Duke University Medical Center

The video below is supplementary material for the following paper:


Movie of a Planar Microassembly Experiment

Movie of a representative microassembly experiment using devices from species 1,3,4 and 5, recorded through an optical microscope. The robots are initially arranged along the corners of a rectangle with sides 1 by 0.9 mm. The assembly experiment is divided into three stages. During stage 1, devices 4 and 5 dock together to form the initial stable shape. In stage 2, device 3 docks with the initial stable shape, while during stage 3, device 1 docks with the stable shape, forming the final assembly.


AVI with DivX 21 MB
AVI with Cinepac Radius 360 MB
AVI with Cinepac Radius - zipped 295 MB
AVI with Indeon 132 MB
AVI with Indeon - zipped 113 MB


A second video, Pas de Deux avec les Microrobots is available here.
It shows simultaneous control and operation of two of our stress-engineered microrobots

These videos may not be used for commercial or for-profit purposes.
They are copyrighted by the authors.