The sand-grain-sized robots work cooperatively, just like ants
Jeong Jae Wie et al.
Swarms of tiny robots guided by magnetic fields can coordinate to behave like ants, from packing collectively to kind a floating raft to lifting objects a whole bunch of instances their weight. Concerning the dimension of a grain of sand, the microrobots might sometime do jobs bigger bots can not, resembling unblocking blood vessels and delivering medication to particular areas contained in the human physique.
Jeong Jae Wie at Hanyang College in South Korea and his colleagues made the tiny, cube-shaped robots utilizing a mould and epoxy resin embedded with magnetic alloy. These small magnetic particles allow the microrobots to be “programmed” to kind numerous configurations after being uncovered to sturdy magnetic fields from sure angles. The bots can then be managed by exterior magnetic fields to carry out spins or different motions. This strategy allowed the group to “efficiently and quickly produce hundreds to thousands of microrobots”, every with a magnetic profile designed for particular missions, says Wie.
The researchers directed the microrobot swarms to cooperatively climb over obstacles 5 instances increased than any single microrobot and kind a floating raft on water. The bots additionally pushed by means of a clogged tube and transported a tablet 2000 instances their particular person weight by means of liquid, demonstrating potential medical functions.
“These magnetic microrobots hold great promise for minimally invasive drug delivery in small, enclosed and confined spaces,” says Xiaoguang Dong at Vanderbilt College in Tennessee, who was not concerned within the analysis. However the microrobots can not but autonomously navigate complicated and tight areas resembling arteries.
Dong says there are security challenges too, together with needing to coat the “potentially toxic” magnetic particles with human-friendly supplies. Nonetheless, he says he’s optimistic in regards to the future medical makes use of of such microrobots. If protected, the bots “can effectively navigate to targeted disease sites and deliver drugs locally”, making therapies extra exact and efficient.
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