Tiny, smart robots can swim through blood vessels to deliver drugs

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

·         Scientists have developed tiny, smart robots that can swim through blood vessels

·         These devices can pass through narrow blood vessels

·         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.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/tiny-smart-robots-can-swim-through-blood-vessels-to-deliver-drugs-1435196-2019-01-20 (Accessed on January 21, 2019)