This may be a strange scene: on a cold night in October 2006, a group of engineering students and their professor Sylvain Martel gathered in the classroom to watch an anesthetized pig on an MRI machine. Breathing, the last classroom sounded with warm applause...
A hospital technician implanted a steel ball with a ballpoint pen bead into the carotid artery of the pig through a catheter. After a few minutes, they saw the steel ball on the computer screen suddenly move. This is exactly what the team wants to see. This is the first time humans have implanted objects into biological blood vessels in a wirelessly controlled manner. This is a historic glimpse of the micro-robot research community, comparable to human beings on the moon for the first time.
Nowadays, various research institutions in the world are working hard to develop this small step. The engineering micro-robot will one day be able to implant the aorta and small blood vessels of the organism at the same time, and then bid farewell to the era of invasive surgery.
Robot doctor will arrive
Dr. Martel writes that the first feat of micro-robots in the medical field will be to treat cancer. Robots can directly import drugs into cancer cells, which only hit damaged cells and do not harm healthy cells.
However, although the future of development is bright, its challenges are enormous. It contains many physical problems, such as how to get a sized robot to pass through a viscous fluid filled with large arteries and small blood vessels; and biological problems, such as ensuring that the robotic material is non-toxic and biodegradable.
Eric Diller, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Toronto, said: “These robots need to be made very small, but they cannot simply scale down existing robots.†Researchers have sought inspiration from nature, using a bionic design similar to bacteria. Make micro robots.
He said that the living environment of micro-objects is very different from that of ordinary objects. If a micro-object swims in the water, the water will look very deep, so the moving objects should be made different. Later, I thought of bacteria, which made the micro-objects contain flagellates, which is very different from swimming with a fish in a container.
Earlier this year, Diller's team had a breakthrough: they made a one-millimeter robot. This robot has two arms and can be controlled by a magnetic field, so it can bridge the body. Diller said that micro-robots don't just make a difference in transporting drugs, they also repair our blood vessels and organs.
Muscle robot
At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduate Caroline Cvetkovic is working on a similar project: a muscle-driven walking robot. Her team uses heart cell electrical impulses to harness small robots whose spine is made of hydrogel.
Cvetkovic conceived a robotic doctor who can help transport drugs, intelligently implant blood vessels, and monitor the environment in the living environment. She said: "Our system is inspired by the muscles, tendons, and bone systems of mammals. It is not only related to physiology, it allows us to imitate the way energy is produced in nature. For example, in the human body, when muscles move, Power is transmitted to the bone through the connection. In our biological robot, when the muscle cells react (usually by electric shock), the force is transmitted to the limb through a special connector. It is made of glue, so it can bend flexibly. In this way, the robot can move the limb to walk."
Robert Woods is an electronics engineer and founder of Harvard's Micro Robotics Lab, and he is confident in the future of micro robots. He is dedicated to making one-time robotic bees that are stunted, capable of pollinating crops, searching for salvage, and troubleshooting hazardous materials. "If you want to make a flying robot, all kinds of flying creatures in nature can give you a lot of inspiration. But we can't simply copy nature. We are trying to understand the movements, behaviors of various creatures and apply it to us. Research project."
Just last week, a team of European and Israeli scientists sent a good news: their scallop robot production has made great progress. (The scallop robot is very small, only a few tenths of a millimeter, so it can swim in the human eye. And the team's real initiative is that this robot can automatically swim without external force. Although like other micro-robots, it needs It is controlled by an external magnetic field, but as soon as the power is input, it can swim automatically without the need for other forces to pull.
Back in 1949, Nobel Laureate in Physics, Feynman, said in his speech: "If you can swallow a surgeon, the surgery will be fun and simple. But how can we make such a tiny surgeon? What? This is my dream, I will leave it to you to achieve."
After decades, scientists have been fighting for it. The dream is not far away, and even more amazing, people will not simply swallow a surgeon, but will be implanted directly into the micro robot doctor. Today's robots are much smaller than Feynman's description. Perhaps the micro level of robots will exceed our imagination in the future.
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