Over at the University of Pennsylvania, research is being done to change the medical world as we know it.
Penn Engineering researchers there are developing what they’ve coined as the world’s smallest autonomous robots, tinier than a grain of salt. The micro robot looks like a black speck with the eye, but sensors and a computer are all packed inside.
What they’re saying:
Marc Miskin, assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering at UPenn, said they’ve been interested in microscopic robots since about 2016, and they’ve been building them smarter every couple years.
“First one was to build something that could kind of walk around and something that could walk around on its own,” said Miskin. “And the robot we’re talking about today is a robot that can also make decisions and choose what it wants to do based on what it sees in the world around it.”
The robot as it is today has three main parts: a sensor, a computer and a way to act or move around.
“This is sort of the first robot to incorporate all three of those things into a very tiny package,” said Miskin.
What we know:
Since the robot is so small, physics is able to help out in a big way.
“The way it works is, the robot creates an electric field in water around it, and the field causes particles in the water to move,” said Miskin. “When they move, it creates a flow and that flow pushes on the robot.”
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Other robots Miskin has built have legs which can operate in complex environments, like tissue.
“We’re even working on legged robots that can kind of come out of the water and move around on land,” said Miskin.
A surprising thing about these micro robots is the cost, with each one costing under a penny to produce.
What’s next:
There’s still a long way to go before we see these in places like the medical field, but Miskin sees this as a catalyst for improving health outcomes.
“You are just a big machine basically made of cells, of little robots. And if you had something that could sense and take action at the same scale, you have all kinds of remarkable new opportunities to treat and cure disease,” he said.
The ultimate vision is to use the robots to fight cancer by applying electric fields, to examine root canals and address nerve pain.
Miskin said the research team is also now looking into coatings that would allow robots to function within the body.
Miskin and his team built the robot with the ability to sense and respond to its environment.
“It can see what’s going on around it, make measurements of its local environment, its onboard computer to make decisions. It can move around,” he said.
The robot’s movement is powered by a specialized engine.
“It can move however it wants,” Miskin said. “It creates an electric field that it can use to pull itself through a fluid. But it can move in any direction and rotate.”
Tiny solar cells convert light into energy, with part of that energy running the computer and part allowing the robot to swim through liquid.
In a nearby lab, the robots are assembled, programmed and tested. Miskin said the team is now working to expand their capabilities.
“Right now we’re interested in, you know, trying to figure out how we can get them to do more interesting behaviors, like working together. And that’s a work in progress,” Miskin said.
When asked about the purpose of such a microscopic machine, Miskin said the long term vision is broad. “
The cost of this robot is under a penny. And we’re hoping that in the future, we’ll be able to make these things and anyone can program them and interact with them,” he said.
But he added that the most promising applications are in medicine.
“What do we think they’re good for? And the answer is biomedical things,” he said. “Could you go in and could you perform medical procedures that would otherwise be impossible by having this tiny, intelligent machine that you can control long term? That’s our vision.”
The research team continues to refine the robots’ abilities as they explore how such microscopic technology could one day operate inside the human body.