these are magnetic micro robots
just millimeters in size
they bend and move in response to
applied magnetic fields
[Music]
and with these magnetic fields
controlled by a gaming controller the
micro robots can be driven carefully and
precisely
[Music]
they can turn
by changing the direction of the
magnetic field
roll in a rotating field
and even grasp and jump
it often feels like you're playing a
video game
in some previous work i did as a
demonstration i was
pushing
blocks of material around and using a
microbot like a bulldozer and the
demonstration i did was playing tetris
the idea is this technique could be used
to assemble human organ tissues by
arranging blocks of different types of
cells in particular patterns
the way these scientists actually
fabricate the micro robots is pretty
ingenious
tiny rare earth magnets are magnetized
in a strong magnetic field then they're
mixed into a uv resin that will harden
when exposed to uv light the mixture is
poured into a mold and placed on a stage
below which is a rotatable permanent
magnet this creates an adjustable
magnetic field to which all the tiny
magnets in the resin align
when the desired orientation is reached
uv light cures the resin in one
particular spot locking those magnets in
place
then the magnetic field can be adjusted
and the next section cured
ultimately the result is a flexible
device with embedded magnets that have
different orientations depending on
where they are
this pattern of orientations is what
gives these micro robots their unique
behavior in response to magnetic fields
multiple compass needles in opposite
directions within a flexible device if
we apply the field vertically those
compass needles will both try to orient
and align with that applied field with
the right magnetic fields the results
can be pretty sophisticated
watch this micro robot pick up a block
and then
roll with it over to a ramp
it rolls up the ramp
deposits the block at the top
and then returns to its original
position
the idea is that devices like this could
be used in medical applications so this
could be sending a device into fluid
areas in your body or into your
gastrointestinal tract for example a
capsule that you could swallow which
will go passively through your gi tract
have no wires attached and at the right
moment we can activate a sampling
chamber basically to open up and take
samples
of either stomach or small intestine
contents
take biopsy samples of the intestinal
wall but grippers like these may not be
the only magnetic micro robots invading
your body
a different research group has pioneered
these even smaller peanut-shaped
magnetic particles and under the right
magnetic field conditions they form
swarms
the swarm can take on different
configurations the vortex where many
particles travel together like a school
of fish
the chain where particles line up and
travel single file
and the ribbon where motion is
perpendicular to the line of particles
one potential application of
microrobotic swarms is drug delivery
each magnetic particle could carry a
small amount of drug and be guided
toward the intended drug delivery site
so to make a swarm useful for potential
biomedical application you'd like to
keep the swarm aggregated you probably
will not be able to see
single micrometer sized particles but
you could see the entire swarm so you'd
like to keep it aggregated so you can
move it and keep track
but then going through
tight environments for example going
through blood vessels
uh
if you're swarm the overall swarm size
is bigger than the blood vessel then it
doesn't fit so you need to line them up
and squeeze through so that's the
motivation for being able to control the
shape of the swarm and who knows one day
you might have swarms of magnetic micro
robots cleaning your teeth
another group of researchers has used
tiny magnetic robots to clear biofilms
those are communities of bacteria and
the protective sugar polymers around
them they typically build up on medical
devices the insides of pipes and
on teeth can i ask does this
idea of magnetic control of micro robots
does it supplant
previous concepts like i'm trying to
conceptualize this in terms of like you
know
sci-fi futures with nanobots where i
imagine you know we imagine these things
is really self-contained and you know
powering themselves around the body and
that sort of stuff yeah great question
so the advantage of magnetic fields
is that it's a very scalable technique
so we can make magnetic microbots that
are single cell size and we can make
them that are
centimeters
in size and the principles behave
similarly it pulls off a lot of the
functionality to
off-board magnetic coils we can have a
big computer sitting there and power
supply
so a lot of the hard aspects of driving
a robot we can do
as traditional size we can have a big
computer we can have medical imaging
hooked up and do all these things off
board and then on board we're just
transmitting
the magnetic field directly to the
device and so that our microbot is
basically then just like the mechanical
hand of the robot and the rest of the
robot is really sitting on the table
beside the patient
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