For the past few years, scientists around the world have been studying ways to use miniature robots to better treat a variety of diseases. The robots are designed to enter the human body, where they can deliver drugs at specific locations or perform precise operations like clearing clogged-up arteries. By replacing invasive, often complicated surgery, they could optimize medicine.
EPFL scientist Selman Sakar teamed up with Hen-Wei Huang and Bradley Nelson at ETHZ to develop a simple and versatile method for building such bio-inspired robots and equipping them with advanced features. They also created a platform for testing several robot designs and studying different modes of locomotion. Their work, published in Nature Communications, produced complex reconfigurable microrobots that can be manufactured with high throughput. They built an integrated manipulation platform that can remotely control the robots’ mobility with electromagnetic fields, and cause them to shape-shift using heat.
A robot that looks and moves like a bacterium
Unlike conventional robots, these microrobots are soft, flexible, and motor-less. They are made of a biocompatible hydrogel and magnetic nanoparticles. These nanoparticles have two functions. They give the microrobots their shape during the manufacturing process, and make them move and swim when an electromagnetic field is applied.
Building one of these microrobots involves several steps. First, the nanoparticles are placed inside layers of a biocompatible hydrogel. Then an electromagnetic field is applied to orientate the nanoparticles at different parts of the robot, followed by a polymerization step to “solidify” the hydrogel. After this, the robot is placed in water where it folds in specific ways depending on the orientation of the nanoparticles inside the gel, to form the final overall 3D architecture of the microrobot.
Once the final shape is achieved, an electromagnetic field is used to make the robot swim. Then, when heated, the robot changes shape and “unfolds”. This fabrication approach allowed the researchers to build microrobots that mimic the bacterium that causes African trypanosomiasis, otherwise known as sleeping sickness. This particular bacterium uses a flagellum for propulsion, but hides it away once inside a person’s bloodstream as a survival mechanism.
The researchers tested different microrobot designs to come up with one that imitates this behavior. The prototype robot presented in this work has a bacterium-like flagellum that enables it to swim. When heated with a laser, the flagellum wraps around the robot’s body and is “hidden”.
A better understanding of how bacteria behave
“We show that both a bacterium’s body and its flagellum play an important role in its movement,” said Sakar. “Our new production method lets us test an array of shapes and combinations to obtain the best motion capability for a given task. Our research also provides valuable insight into how bacteria move inside the human body and adapt to changes in their microenvironment.”
For now, the microrobots are still in development. “There are many factors we have to take into account,” says Sakar. “For instance, we have to make sure that the microrobots won’t cause any side-effects in patients.”
Learn more: New remote-controlled microrobots for medical operations
The Latest on: Remote-controlled microrobots
[google_news title=”” keyword=”remote-controlled microrobots” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Remote-controlled microrobots
- Best Ceiling Fan With Remote To Elevate The Overall Appearance Of Your Spaceon April 20, 2024 at 2:30 pm
Discover relaxation and convenience with our choice of ceiling fans that simultaneously work with a remote control. These fans use smart technology and allow users to control fan speed ...
- Watch a swarm of cyborg cockroaches controlled by computerson April 15, 2024 at 5:00 pm
A swarm of remote-controlled cyborg cockroaches can navigate to a target location while avoiding obstacles and each other. Researchers say such swarms could be contained inside large robots and ...
- How to Deep Clean Your Remote Controlon April 13, 2024 at 4:36 am
Remote controls help us manage various electronics around our homes, from gaming controllers to controls for TVs, ceiling fans, and other household gadgets. However, they're often overlooked when ...
- How to Clean Your Remote Control in Six Stepson April 12, 2024 at 5:00 pm
How do you know if you need to clean the inside of your remote control? There are a few tell-tale signs that your remote is dirty on the inside: The buttons are sticky or unresponsive buttons You ...
- This Entrepreneur Wants To Streamline The Trucking Industry Using Remote Controlled Vehicles And Has Raised $59M To Do Iton April 8, 2024 at 6:16 pm
Their innovative approach allows drivers to remotely control trucks from an office, effectively operating vehicles across great distances, such as from Munich to the U.K. This method separates the ...
- Remote Controlled Mini Tractor Pulls Are A Real Sport, And My Latest Obsessionon March 26, 2024 at 7:26 am
Scaling this event down doesn’t sacrifice much of the excitement, as I learned when a video of remote controlled tractor pull competitions started popping up on my TikTok feed. The specific ...
- Robot boats: The remote-controlled vessels on our season March 6, 2024 at 4:00 pm
Some have reduced crews, some have no crews at all. Increasingly, they're dependent on the control of people who can be sitting hundreds of miles away, sending commands via satellite links.
- Robot ships: Huge remote controlled vessels are setting sailon March 6, 2024 at 4:00 pm
Marian Meza Chavira is learning to pilot underwater robots from a remote control centre Entering the company's remote operations centre in Southampton is like walking on to a futuristic film set.
- Remote-controlled Robots, Revolutionizing the Way We Workon February 11, 2024 at 8:58 am
Remote work is expanding into many other areas besides office work. Robots and remote-control technology make a greater range of tasks possible, from stocking convenience stores, to operating ...
- remote controlledon February 5, 2024 at 4:01 pm
Humans have been sailing various seas and oceans for thousands of years, and using boats for potentially even longer than that. But as a species we wouldn’t have made it very far if it was only ...
via Bing News