This is a rotifer. It's a microorganism about a hair's width in size. They live everywhere on earth—saltwater, freshwater, everywhere—and this one is out looking for food.
I remember the first time I saw this thing, I was like eight years old and it completely blew me away. I mean, here is this incredible little creature, it's hunting, swimming, going about its life, but its whole universe fits within a drop of pond water.
So this little rotifer shows us something really amazing. It says that you can build a machine that is functional, complex, smart, but all in a tiny little package, one so small that it's impossible to see it.
Now, the engineer in me is just blown away by this thing, that anyone could make such a creature. But right behind that wonder, I have to admit, is a bit of envy.
I mean, nature can do it. Why can't we?
Why can't we build tiny robots? Well, I'm not the only one to have this idea.
In fact, in the last, oh, few years, researchers around the world have taken up the task of trying to build robots that are so small that they can't be seen. And what we're going to tell you about today is an effort at Cornell University and now at the University of Pennsylvania to try to build tiny robots.
OK, so that's the goal. But how do we do it?
How do we go about building tiny robots? Well, Pablo Picasso, of all people, gives us our first clue.
Picasso said, "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." OK. But steal from what?
