Matt Denton's Spoolbot looks almost exactly like a 2 kg spool of 3D-printer filament, complete with real filament wrapped around the outside. At a glance, there is little to suggest that it is a mobile robot.
Inside are an ESP32-C3-based controller, IMU, RC receiver, geared DC motors, and battery packs used as ballast. The spool's black end discs act as the wheels, while the internal frame stays upright as the shell rolls around it.
A part whose entire job is to sit beside a 3D printer holding filament has been turned into a robot without giving up the disguise. You might not notice anything unusual until the spool drives away.
To push 3D printing down to roughly 150 µm scale, a microscopic printer was built that shines a 405 nm laser through the tip of an optical fiber and cures resin point by point. Created by Diffraction Limited, it moves the illuminated point much like an FDM printer moves its nozzle.
To improve resolution further, the resin is mixed with curcumin from turmeric as a UV absorber. The result includes a Benchy just 150 µm long and a Stanford Bunny that appears smaller than a human hair.
Push microfabrication far enough and turmeric somehow joins the materials team. That's an unexpectedly kitchen-adjacent breakthrough.
A part whose entire job is to sit beside a 3D printer holding filament has been turned into a robot without giving up the disguise. You might not notice anything unusual until the spool drives away.