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LONDON – A tiny piece of elastic material swims along a narrow tube, wraps it up and changes shape depending on the thickness of the fluid and the contours of the tube that surrounds it when it 's narrowing. he is moving towards his goal.
The miniature robot – the brainchild of scientists in Switzerland looking for new ways to deliver drugs to diseased tissue – is designed to work its way into blood vessels and other body systems.
The team is led by Selman Sakar at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Bradley Nelson at ETH Zurich, two leading research institutes in the field of science and technology.
"Nature has developed a multitude of microorganisms that change shape as their environmental conditions change. This basic principle inspired our design of microbots, "Nelson said. "The main challenge for us was to develop physics describing the types of changes we were interested in, and then incorporate them into new manufacturing technologies."
The soft robot they developed measures a few millimeters long and uses a folding technique similar to that of origami, which helps to adapt to the environment .
The robots are made from hydrogel nanocomposites containing magnetic particles, which means that their movement can be guided with the help of a magnetic controller.
The team is currently working on improving the microbot's ability to swim through liquids such as those found in the human body.
Other researchers working on the use of microbots in the human body include a team from the City University of Hong Kong who developed a flexible robot that moves like a caterpillar, also designed to deliver drugs into the body .
Their flexible robot has hundreds of pointed legs resembling hair. In 2018, the team built the robot from a type of silicon embedded in magnetic particles. The rubbery material is flexible and can be cut to form different shapes and sizes.
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