Has potential to deliver drugs or perform precise operations Credit: Selman Sakar
Remote-controlled microrobots may soon be the newest way of performing invasive, complicated surgery, thanks to scientists from Switzerland.
The robot looks and moves like a bacterium — specifically, the protozoan bacterium belonging to the genus Trypanosoma that causes African sleeping sickness and is carried by the tsetse fly. It was developed by researchers from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and ETH Zürich.
It is made from a biocompatible hydrogel and magnetic nanoparticles, which are placed inside of the gel. The hydrogel is solidified, and the robot is placed in water where it changes into a specific shape depending on the placement of the nanoparticles.
The robot unfolds small pieces from its side, which look and behave similarly to a bacterium’s flagellum, the researchers’ inspiration in creating this robot’s behavior. The robot’s “flagellum” can wrap around itself to hide, and an electromagnetic field is used to help the robot move.
“We decided to add shape shifting as an extra feature because the size, geometry, and material properties of the environment within a given medical procedure can drastically change,” Selman Sakar from the MicroBioRobotic Systems Laboratory at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, told HCB News.
“The ability to temporarily hide a body part (the flagellum in this example) when the environment is too dense or the machine will navigate using a different locomotion mode is quite interesting and appealing,” he said.
The following video illustrates the robot heating up in hot water, unfolding, and moving around.
“We believe these next generation microrobots will be able to navigate within the gastrointestinal tract, and certain parts of the endocrine and reproductive system. Targeted delivery of therapeutic payload is the most promising biomedical application area,” Sakar said.
For now, the robots are still in development and Sakar said that there are still factors that need to be taken into account, such as making sure the robots do not cause any side effects in the patients.
Back in May, researchers from MIT, the University of Sheffield and the Tokyo Institute of Technology developed an ingestible origami robot made out of meat.
The robot may be deployed to help retrieve small items that someone swallowed, such as a small battery, or patch a small wound in the stomach.
