(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The scientists and engineers who introduced the world to tiny robots demonstrating soccer skills are creating the next level of friendly competition designed to advance microrobotics—the field devoted to the construction and operations of useful robots whose dimensions are measured in microns.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in collaboration with IEEE, is inviting university and collegiate student teams currently engaged in microrobotic, microelectronic, or micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) research to participate in the 2010 NIST Mobile Microrobotics Challenge. The competition will be held as part of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in May 2010 in Anchorage, Alaska.

Viewed under a microscope, the microbots are operated by remote control and move in response to changing magnetic fields or electrical signals transmitted across a microchip playing field. The bots are a few tens of microns to a few hundred microns long, and their masses can be just a few nanograms (billionths of a gram). They are manufactured from materials such as aluminum, nickel, gold, silicon, and chromium.

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