I-SWARM robots could be used for everything from cleaning to surveillance to medicine to manufacturing. The trick to building useful little robots is to put the entire robot on a single circuit board.

The researchers, from institutes in Sweden, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, explain that their building approach marks a new paradigm of robot development in microrobotics. The technique involves integrating an entire robot - with communication, locomotion, energy storage, and electronics - in different modules on a single circuit board. In the past, the single-chip robot concept has presented significant limitations in design and manufacturing. However, instead of using solder to mount electrical components on a printed circuit board as in the conventional method, the researchers use conductive adhesive to attach the components to a double-sided flexible printed circuit board using surface mount technology. The circuit board is then folded to create a three-dimensional robot.

The resulting robots are very small, with their length, width, and height each measuring less than 4 mm. The robots are powered by a solar cell on top, and move by three vibrating legs. A fourth vibrating leg is used as a touch sensor. As the researchers explain, a single microrobot by itself is a physically simple individual. But many robots communicating with each other using infrared sensors and interacting with their environment can form a group that is capable of establishing swarm intelligence to generate more complex behavior. The framework for this project, called I-SWARM (intelligent small-world autonomous robots for micro-manipulation) is inspired by the behavior of biological insects.

Sounds awesome yet also a little creepy. Not that I'm afraid of an army of flea-sized robots spying on me but, well, I am. [Physorg]

Still, I find myself transfixed as the robots self-organize, connecting to one another like a giant train to stack their power for a greater purpose. It's also pretty funny to watch the poor child who must be thinking, "this was not worth that stupid Barbie, not at all." [EPA via MAKE]

GOCE belongs to the group that the European Space Agency classifies as Earth Explorers: five new satellites dedicated to provide a closer, more intimate look of our planet. And while CRYOSAT and SWARM look funky too—with SMOS and AEOLUS being a bit more conventional—GOCE's design seems straight out of a sci-fi movie.

GOCE
Developed to do a precise map of Earth's gravity field—with the help of onboard instrumentation and the GPS network—and also study the oceans' circulation.

CryoSat-2
It will study changes in polar ice caps and floating ice.

SMOS
Designed to measure soil moisture in land and salinity in the oceans, which will help us understand better the behavior of the oceans.

Aeolus
It will analyze wind patterns to improve weather forecasts and the understanding of atmospheric dynamics.

Swarm
This constellation of satellites will control the evolution of the Earth's geomagnetic field to help us understand Earth's interior and its climate.

I don't know what kind of substances the engineers at the European Space Agency are using, but I want a double shot. [ESA via Astroengine and Euronews]