Researchers at Rensselaer created a robotic assistant that is more versatile, cheaper, and which can be remotely controllable by anyone whose mobility is impaired. The disclosed robotic assistant generally comprises a motorized base and dual arm robot mounted thereon. The robotic assistant is designed to be utilized by mobility impaired individuals through a sip-and-blow interface, tongue command device, eye/blink tracker, a joystick, etc., to, e.g., command the motion of the assistant to pick up objects from floor or shelf, to inspect suspicious noise, etc.

This technology relates to visually-guided multiprobe microassembly for assembling micro-electromechanical (MEMS) devices from multiple parts that are assembled rather than using bulk-processes to produce devices monolithically. Current production technologies primarily use a single wafer that is process chemically to produce finished devices. While this is useful for many devices, it results in mechanical regions that exist primarily in the plane and do not have fully spatial mechanisms without significant depth of stacked parts.