  Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which
is costly and time-consuming. There are no good dynamic simulation tools to
predict the motion or performance of a microrobot as it moves against a
substrate. At smaller length scales, the influence of adhesion and friction,
which scales with surface area, becomes more pronounced. Thus, rigid body
dynamic simulators, which implicitly assume that contact between two bodies can
be modeled as point contact are not suitable. In this paper, we present
techniques for simulating the motion of microrobots where there can be
intermittent and non-point contact between the robot and the substrate. We use
this simulator to study the motion of microrobots of different shapes and
select shapes that are most promising for performing a given task.
