A robotic micro-assembly process inspired by the construction of the ancient pyramids and relying on several thousand flagellated bacteria acting as micro-workers

Bacteria can be used as computer-controlled bioactuators and means of propulsion for microrobots and other micro-scaled entities to accomplish precise operations as first proposed by our research group in [1] and demonstrated later experimentally in [2]. The last reference confirmed that the propulsion force provided by the flagella being connected to molecular motors embedded in the bacterial cell, could be exploited to replace more conventional technologies being presently used in robotics but which could not be implemented at such a scale. In a coherent effort, our group also pioneered a method of not only harnessing instead of mimicking nature by using flagellated bacteria and more specifically Magnetotactic Bacteria (MTB) for propulsion and transport, but also for the controlled steering or computerized directional swimming control of bacterial micronanorobots [3].