Upon introduction into the bloodstream these unpowered, flexible and soft nanobots’ tails fold away for a safe trip through the bloodstream. First, the nanoparticles give the robots their shape during the manufacturing process. Then, a polymerization step helps make the hydrogel into a solid.
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The robot “CHIMP” developed by Team Tartan Rescue from the USA prepares to complete a task during the finals of the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
The method laid out in the study has huge implications for the field of medicine.
Scientists from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne (EPFL) and the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ) have manages to salvage some good from this scourge, however, by using the protozoa that causes the disease as the model for a new class of microbots created to deliver drugs with precision and carry out other medical procedures such as clearing out clogged arteries and other forms of microsurgery.
Performing precise operations, delivering drugs to the body’s every cell or unclogging the heart’s arteries can never be as easy as before. By replacing invasive, often complicated surgery, they could optimize medicine.
Selman Sakar of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) together with Hen-Wei Huang and Bradley Nelson at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) developed a simple and versatile method for building bio-inspired robots and equipping them with advanced features. They also created a platform for testing different robot designs and studying different modes of locomotion. Their research was published in Nature Communications. They built an integrated manipulation platform that can remotely control the robots’ mobility with electromagnetic fields, and cause them to shape-shift using heat. These nanoparticles have two functions.
When the final shape is attained, an electromagnetic field is used to make the robot swim. When placed in water the microbot folds based on the orientation of the nanoparticles to produce the final configuration. The result is a robot that can be controlled using an electromagnetic field and, when heated, can alter its shape. Then, when heated, the robot changed shape and unfolded. The bacteria circulate in the body with the help of a flagellum, and can hide itself inside the bloodstream of a patient as a way to survive longer.
The team has tested several designs for the microbots for the imitation of the sleeping sickness bacterium’s flagellum. Finally, they have been able to come up with a prototype having bacterium-like flagellum that allows it to swim. The developed robots have been created to get into body, where they can drop drugs at target locations or carry out exact operations, for instance can clear blocked arteries.
“We have shown that both the body of a bacterium and its flagellum are both play a crucial role in its movement”, researcher Selman Sakar said in a statement. “Our research provides valuable insight on how bacteria move inside body and how they adapt to changes within microenvironment”.
However, the microrobots are only in development stage.
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Sakar says. “There are still many factors we have to take into account”. Their focus is to make sure that the microbots don’t cause inherent harm inside a patient’s body.
