The robots floating in the air designed at MIT

From the size of an egg, new electronic creatures made at MIT could revolutionize medical treatments

"MIT researchers have created what may be the smallest robots that can detect their environment, store data, and even perform computer tasks," said the prestigious American university.

These are human-sized egg devices that house tiny electronic circuits made of two-dimensional materials capable of carrying tiny particles called colloids.

The goal of these minirobots is to lay the foundation for devices that, according to the researchers, could be dispersed to make diagnostic trips across everything from the human digestive system to oil and gas pipelines, or perhaps "We wanted to discover methods to graft whole electronic circuits intact into colloidal particles," said Michael Strano, in a statement in a statement. "

Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and lead author of the study published by Nature Nanotechnology and where the details of the technological process are described.

Colloids can be compared to dust particles in suspension in Because of their small size, the random motions imparted by the colliding air molecules are stronger than the gravitational pull, allowing them to float and travel long distances.

Strano explains that working with colloids avoids the problems they face from other groups that develop nanobots.One of these problems, the control of movement, forced them to develop flagella to control the direction and propel itself. "This may not be the most successful approach," he said

"The tiny robots manufactured by the MIT team are a Self-powered and do not require external power supply or internal batteries. A single photodiode provides the electrical net that tiny robot circuits need to power their computer and memory circuits. This is enough to allow them to feel the information about their environment, store this data in their memory and then read the data after fulfilling their mission, "explains the statement.

In the case of industrial applications, these nanobots could be inserted into the end of a pipe, transported with the flow, and then removed at the other end, providing a record of conditions encountered on the road, including the presence of contaminants that could indicate the location of problem areas.

"Similarly, such particles could potentially be used for diagnostic purposes in the body, for example to cross the digestive tract for signs of inflammation or other signs of disease," say the researchers.