Team members Kelly Ishii and Wenqi Hu

Electrical engineering graduate students Kelly Ishii and Wenqi Hu placed second to a Canadian team in Mānoa’s first foray in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Microrobotics Challenge.

Consisting of a tiny air bubble inside a chamber thinner than a strand of hair, drawing energy from the heat generated by a computer projector and operating under a microscope, the UH microbot completed a figure-eight track and assembled tiny triangles.

Next for the team: tackling provisional patents, academic papers and grant funding to develop what could be a tool for manipulating components within circuit boards and living cells.

Read more about the competition and the UH team’s remarkable advisor—UH alumnus and former national engineering student of the year Aaron Ohta.

Tags: engineering, international, UH Manoa, Vol. 36 No. 3