Minimalist milliscale robot construction by M-spray

Milliscale robots have been of interest for emerging applications in biomedical settings, benefit from their diverse form locomotion performance and weeny size. Although recent success in exploiting novel material and architecting approaches to achieve sophisticated functions of milliscale robots, it remains challenging to adapt to unpredictable environments or diverse targets by means of the toolless fabrication process. Inspired by the parasitism and adhering strategy in nature, an agglutinate magnetic spray (M-spray) is proposed for various milliscale robots' fast construction. Profiting from its peculiarities of self-adhesiveness, magnetization, reprogramming, and disintegration, M-spray is capable of interacting with multifarious inanimate targets from 1D to 2D, to 3D structures, performing multimodal locomotion ability to adapt unstructured environment and disintegrating themselves after completing the task. This minimalist robot construction increases the versatility of milliscale robots, opens new horizons in robotic interaction, and inspires wide applications in biomedical area.