The grain-of-sand-sized robots work together, like ants
Jeong Jae Wie et al.
Clusters of tiny robots driven by magnetic fields can be coordinated to act like ants, clustering together to form a floating raft, lifting objects hundreds of times their own weight. About the size of a grain of sand, the microrobots could someday perform tasks that larger bots can’t, such as unclogging blood vessels and delivering drugs to specific locations inside the human body.
Jeong Jae knows At South Korea’s Hanyang University and his colleagues, they made tiny cube-shaped robots using magnetic alloy embedded molds and epoxy resin. These tiny magnetic particles can be “programmed” to form various configurations after the microrobot is exposed to strong magnetic fields from certain angles. The bots can then be controlled by external magnetic fields to perform spins or other movements. This approach allowed the team to “efficiently and rapidly produce hundreds or thousands of microrobots,” each with a magnetic profile designed for specific missions, Wie says.
The researchers directed clusters of microrobots to cooperatively climb obstacles five times higher than any single microrobot and form a raft that floats on water. The bot pushed through a closed tube and transported a pill 2000 times through the liquid, demonstrating potential medical applications.
“These magnetic microrobots hold great promise for minimally invasive drug delivery in small, closed, confined spaces,” he says. Xiaoguang Dong at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, who was not involved in the research. But microrobots can’t yet autonomously navigate complex, narrow spaces like arteries.
Dong says there are also safety challenges, including the need to cover “potentially toxic” magnetic particles with human-friendly materials. However, he says he is optimistic about the future medical uses of such things micro robots. If safe, bots can “efficiently navigate to disease sites and deliver drugs locally,” making treatments more precise and effective.
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