Westlake and Cornell Report Bidirectional Closed-Loop Micro-Robots in Nature Electronics

On September 23, a study titled "Micro-robots that perceive and reshape their environment" was published online in Nature Electronics. Wei Wang, assistant professor at Westlake University, and Jinsong Zhang, postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, are co-first authors. Together with Cornell professor Itai Cohen, they serve as co-corresponding authors.

The study demonstrates a temperature-driven closed-loop system integrating temperature sensing, CMOS on-chip processing, and electrochemical artificial cilia. Temperature changes alter the circuit output, which controls cilia movement to redistribute heat in the liquid, and the modified temperature in turn affects the circuit, forming a bidirectional loop of perception, computation, actuation, and environmental feedback.

The CMOS circuit, fabricated in a 180 nm process, measures about 200 μm × 200 μm, with tens of thousands of units producible on an 8-inch wafer. The artificial cilia feature a double-hinged design that generates non-reciprocal motion under low Reynolds number conditions, enabling continuous fluid pumping. In experiments, activating a 6×9 cilia array lowered local temperature by about 0.4 °C, corresponding to an effective isotherm displacement of about 0.2 mm.

The team implemented three basic sensing modes—threshold, continuous, and gradient—providing state, intensity, and directional information. The researchers plan to release the devices from the substrate to enable mobile microrobots that actively search for environmental signals, with future goals including collective behavior and sensing of pH and biochemical markers.