These six tiny 17 gram robotic ants can pull a 1,800 kilogram car.

The MicroTug robots, developed by researchers at Stanford University, have a pulling-power equivalent of six humans pulling the Eiffel Tower. Confusingly, an 1,800 kg car is two tons (US) but 1.8 tonnes (UK).


The video from staff in the Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Laboratory at the US university builds on previous work where a single MicroTug pulled more than 2,000 times its own weight.

David Christensen, a researcher from the lab behind the work, said the robots and their teamwork were based on that of ants, who work together to move large objects.

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The latest research, which is published in the paper Let's All Pull Together: Principles for Sharing Large Loads in Microrobot Teams, is due to be presented by the Stanford engineers to the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, in Stockholm in May. "By considering the dynamics of the team, not just the individual, we are able to build a team of our 'microTug' robots that, like ants, are superstrong individually, but then also work together as a team," Christensen told the New York Times.

MicroTug's work by using controllable adhesives that allow the robots to pull more than their body weight. "These are small robots that can both move quickly and use controllable adhesion to apply interaction forces many times their body weight," the original research by Stanford states. "The adhesives enable these autonomous robots to accomplish this feat on a variety of common surfaces without complex infrastructure".