It's a machine so small it is barely visible to the naked eye, yet equipped with sensors, a motor and its own onboard computer.
Powered by solar cells, the robot is designed to move, measure its surroundings and potentially pave the way for new medical breakthroughs.
The robot is smaller than a grain of salt, measuring less than one millimeter. "And if you look in there... each one of those is one of the robots," researcher Marc Miskin said while examining a tray of the microscopic devices.
Miskin and his team built the robot with the ability to sense and respond to its environment.
"It can see what's going on around it, make measurements of its local environment, its onboard computer to make decisions. It can move around," he said.
The robot's movement is powered by a specialized engine.
"It can move however it wants," Miskin said. "It creates an electric field that it can use to pull itself through a fluid. But it can move in any direction and rotate."
Tiny solar cells convert light into energy, with part of that energy running the computer and part allowing the robot to swim through liquid.
In a nearby lab, the robots are assembled, programmed and tested. Miskin said the team is now working to expand their capabilities.
"Right now we're interested in, you know, trying to figure out how we can get them to do more interesting behaviors, like working together. And that's a work in progress," Miskin said.
When asked about the purpose of such a microscopic machine, Miskin said the long term vision is broad. "
The cost of this robot is under a penny. And we're hoping that in the future, we'll be able to make these things and anyone can program them and interact with them," he said.
But he added that the most promising applications are in medicine.
"What do we think they're good for? And the answer is biomedical things," he said. "Could you go in and could you perform medical procedures that would otherwise be impossible by having this tiny, intelligent machine that you can control long term? That's our vision."
The research team continues to refine the robots' abilities as they explore how such microscopic technology could one day operate inside the human body.