The
researchers from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and ETH Zurich
in Switzerland drew inspiration from bacteria to design the highly flexible
biocompatible micro-robots.
HIGHLIGHTS
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Scientists have developed tiny, smart robots that can swim through
blood vessels
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These devices can pass through narrow blood vessels
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The robots can be either controlled using an electromagnetic field
or left to navigate
Scientists have developed tiny, smart robots that can swim through
blood vessels, paving the way for ingestible machines that could deliver drugs
directly to diseased tissue in the future.
The researchers from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Lausanne (EPFL) and ETH Zurich in Switzerland drew inspiration from bacteria to
design the highly flexible biocompatible micro-robots.
Since these devices are able to swim through fluids and modify
their shape when needed, they can pass through narrow blood vessels and
intricate systems without compromising on speed or manoeuvrability.
They are made of hydrogel nanocomposites that contain magnetic
nanoparticles, allowing them to be controlled via an electromagnetic field,
researchers said.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, describes a
method for programming the robot's shape so that it can easily travel through
fluids that are dense, viscous or moving at rapid speeds.
Fabricating miniaturised robots presents a host of challenges,
which the scientists addressed using an origami-based folding method.
Their novel locomotion strategy employs embodied intelligence,
which is an alternative to the classical computation paradigm that is performed
by embedded electronic systems.
