DARPA has competition plans for insect-scale robots

Earlier this month, DARPA announced it is launching a new SHort-Range Independent Microrobotic Platforms (SHRIMP) program. SHRIMP will develop and demonstrate micro-to-milli robotic platforms for scenarios brought on by natural and critical disasters.

As IEEE Spectrum put it, it’s a program to develop “insect-scale robots” for disaster recovery and high-risk environments. The topic is simple enough to understand and it also is obvious that the means of accomplishing these platforms is tough.

DARPA, said its announcement, will be facing the challenge of “creating extremely SWaP-constrained microrobotics.” SWaP refers to size, weight and power.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is interested in getting it right for search and rescue missions. A mighty giant robot may be determined enough to do heroic deeds like clearing debris but it is the swarm of insect-robots that has DARPA’s attention for search and rescue scenarios that call for moving through tiny cracks and crevices. IEEE Spectrum‘s Evan Ackerman remarked that in search and rescue, “you’re better off with lots of very small robots covering as much ground as possible.”

That said, the devil will be in the details of component parts including actuators, mobility systems and power storage.Size, weight, and power are the three challenges up for attention. Of the three, power is the biggest, said Ackerman. Consider, untethered tiny robots and how quickly they may run out of power.