Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The gear moves when its light-responsive structure is activated. (CREDIT: Gan Wang) Gears have powered the world for millennia, ...

Whisky-inspired chemicals could help power a new generation of microscopic machines, according to researchers who have discovered a way to make tiny particles "swim" through liquid using compounds ...

Bacteria-scale robots that can run for months without human control are no longer a lab fantasy. Researchers have now built fully programmable micro-machines, smaller than a grain of salt, that can ...

Using laser light instead of traditional mechanics, researchers have built micro-gears that can spin, shift direction, and even power tiny machines. These breakthroughs could soon lead to ...

A Cornell research team has developed a new way to design complex microscale machines, one that draws inspiration from the operation of proteins and hummingbird beaks. The group's paper, "Bifurcation ...

As the human race has advanced, we've made the process of creating products extremely efficient. Assembly line factories litter the planet's landscape, mass producing items piece by piece and ...

Gears have powered the world for millennia, from clock machines to car engines. But miniaturizing them to microscopic dimensions has stumped engineers for decades. Anything under one-tenth of a ...