Scientists have designed soft, remote-controlled microrobots that could be used to deliver drugs at specific locations or perform precise operations like clearing clogged-up arteries.
Researchers around the world have been studying ways to use miniature robots designed to enter the human body to better treat a variety of diseases.
By replacing invasive, often complicated surgery, they could optimise medicine.
Scientists from EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) and ETH Zurich in Switzerland developed a simple and versatile method for building such bio-inspired robots and equipping them with advanced features.
They also created a platform for testing several robot designs and studying different modes of locomotion.
Their work produced complex reconfigurable microrobots that can be manufactured with high throughput.
They built an integrated manipulation platform that can remotely control the robots’ mobility with electromagnetic fields, and cause them to shape-shift using heat.
Unlike conventional robots, these microrobots are soft, flexible, and motor-less. They are made of a biocompatible hydrogel and magnetic nanoparticles. These nanoparticles give the microrobots their shape during the manufacturing process, and make them move and swim when an electromagnetic field is applied.
Building one of these microrobots involves several steps. First, the nanoparticles are placed inside layers of a biocompatible hydrogel. Then an electromagnetic field is applied to orientate the nanoparticles at different parts of the robot, followed by a polymerisation step to “solidify” the hydrogel. After this, the robot is placed in water where it folds in specific ways depending on the orientation of nanoparticles inside the gel to form the final overall 3D architecture.
