What happens when you shrink robots down to the size of insects? Let’s explore the mind-bending physics behind their superpowers! Engineers get Onshape Professional free up to 6 months: go to https://www.onshape.pro/veritasium to create CAD models and bring your ideas to life.
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00:00 The Problem Of Surface Tension
3:16 How Does A Bee Fly?
7:08 What Powers Something So Small?
8:16 Tiny Muscles
10:36 Pogo Sticks On Mars
11:27 Mini Search Parties
13:29 Swarms Of Spybots
15:55 Penny Sized Combustion Engines
18:40 Science For Science’s Sake
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A massive thank you to Kevin Chen and the Soft and Micro Robotics Laboratory at MIT.
for hosting us and showcasing their incredible robots. Do check out their paper Acrobatics at Insect Scale: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adp4256
We’re incredibly grateful to Mechanical Engineering at Cornell and the Harvard Microrobotics Lab for their groundbreaking work that informed much of what we’ve shared here.
Special thanks to Pakpong Chirarattananon and Cameron Aubin for their expertise and insights into mini-robot science.
CORRECTION: The scale bar at 18:19 is wrong. It should be 2cm, not 2mm. Thanks @nicolaszaugg5825 for pointing it out.
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If you’re looking for a molecular modeling kit, try Snatoms, a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically. https://snatoms.com/
Sign up to the Veritasium newsletter for weekly science updates - https://ve42.co/Newsletter
References: https://ve42.co/botsrefs
Video and Image Credits:
Giving bug-like, flying robots a boost by MIT via YouTube - https://ve42.co/FlyingRobots
Leading edge vortex stably attached near the base of a freely flying maple seed Acer pseudo-platanus by Francis Villatoro via YouTube - https://ve42.co/VortexStab
NASA Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Animations by JPLRaw via YouTube - https://ve42.co/IngenuityAnim
Rolls-Royce | SWARM Robots by Rolls Royce via YouTube - https://ve42.co/SWARMRobots
Robot Rescue: Behind The Technology Deployed For Disaster Relief | by NBC News via YouTube - https://ve42.co/RobotRescue
Call to Service: The Final Rescue of 9/11 by 5.11 Tactical via YouTube - https://ve42.co/CallToService
Colony Collapse: The Mystery of the Missing Bees | Retro Report | by NYT via YouTube - https://ve42.co/ColonyCollapse
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Special thanks to our Patreon supporters:
Adam Foreman, Albert Wenger, Alexander Tamas, Anton Ragin, Autodidactic Studios, Bertrand Serlet, Blake Byers, Bruce, Dave Kircher, David Johnston, Evgeny Skvortsov, Farbod Mansorian, Garrett Mueller, Gnare, Greg Scopel, I. H., Juan Benet, KeyWestr, Kyi, Lee Redden, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Matthias Wrobel, Meekay, Michael Krugman, Orlando Bassotto, Paul Peijzel, Richard Sundvall, Sam Lutfi, Spilmann Reed, TTST, Tj Steyn, Ubiquity Ventures, gpoly, meg noah, wolfee
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Directed by Henry van Dyck
Written by Henry van Dyck
Edited by Nick Lear and Trenton Oliver
Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Jakub Misiek, Emma Wright and Ivy Tello
Filmed by Henry van Dyck, Petr Lebedev and Michael Cimpher
Additional Research by Geeta Thakur and Gabe Strong
Produced by Derek Muller, Henry van Dyck, Rob Beasley Spence, and Tori Brittain
Thumbnail contributions by Ben Powell, Peter Sheppard, Ren Hurley and Henry van Dyck
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images and Story blocks
Music from Epidemic Sound
📝 Transcript
Transcribing... This may take a few minutes.
Top Comments
@veritasium
If you enjoyed this video and would like to know more about miniature robots and combustion engines, head over to our Patreon for an extended interview with Cameron Aubin https://www.patreon.com/posts/patreon-mini-cut-120949318
191 likes
@yewo.m
5:07 - Typical Physics teacher. "Let's approximate this bird as a cube"
8984 likes
@Oddman1980
It's 2040. You need to walk to the grocery store, so you put on your beekeeper's veil and grab your tennis racket to fend off the advertising bots.
5709 likes
@SellymeYT
I'm sorry did you just tell me that this tiny robot exits water by splitting it up into its constituent atoms and then exploding it?
3336 likes
@heliox111
Poor bird that mistakes one of those for real insects
42 likes
@suspicioussand
5:04 "assume the cow is a sphere in a frictionless vacuum" type approximation
5232 likes
@1.4142
The fact that these all need wires supplying electricity constantly makes insects even more impressive.
3537 likes
@idwolfshow1727
3:38 I love his sense of humor. "We know who's fault this is" lol!
775 likes
@BenFinio
I think the clip at 8:00 is older than this YouTube channel - that's one of my robots from grad school. Glad to see it make a guest appearance in a Veritasium video 15 years later!
117 likes
@MilivojSegedinac
15:25 love how people think about robotic bees that are *spying* on you while they watch this on a device (phone) that's literally spying on you
730 likes
@cation8047
The way he tries to prove that those are never going to be used in harmful ways is just funny at this point. There are tons of things that were created to do good, but became an attribute of war afterwards.
949 likes
@alpebblington7960
3 min in, and using a mini explosion to break the surface tension has me in awe!! I'm astonished
714 likes
@Thelaststar_intheuniverse
This how smart teachers expect us to Be
1 likes
@TheJoker-qn6vw
Being in Uni doing things like this can be very fulfilling...solving complex problems, coming up with very awkward but working solutions and learning new things everyday is very satisfying.
511 likes
@AtlasReburdened
Spying on you isn't even top ten of the worst things that could be done with them. One of them could dip a tiny needle in your cofee when you step away, and leave behind enough VX to "finish the job" 100 times over.