Microbots and Other Bots

Researchers in labs around the world are working on incredibly small devices that can work inside us, to help fight disease.

Reminds me of the sixties movie, Fantastic Voyage, where Raquel Welch and her crew are shrunken, then injected into a diplomat to save his life.

No one is being shrunken here but we are talking about incredibly tiny robots measuring micrometers to nanometers.

Just how small is that?

Well, a human hair is 60 to 120 micrometers thick. Now imagine that within one micrometer, there are one thousand nanometers.

Robots this small are called Nanobots, which are much smaller than bacteria. Microbots are about the size of a bacterium and can be seen with a microscope.

One microbot being developed resembles the flagella – a spiral shaped tail that helps a bacterium to swim. These artificial bacterial flagella or ABFs are about half the diameter of a human hair and are made using computer chip technology.

The process takes indium, gallium, arsenic and chromium and deposits them in layers on an ultrathin sheet. The ABFs are then cut by a complex process called photolithography to create the ultra thin ribbons which curl up to form the tiny spirals.

A magnetic head is attached to the ABF so that, through a magnetic field, can be made to rotate, and move forward and backward. Once it's directed to a precise location, the robot could deliver medicine that destroys tumors or removes plaque.

One application is to use an ABF to treat macular degeneration which destroys central vision – the kind you need for reading. Researchers are designing a microbot that once injected into the eye, can stay for months delivering a therapeutic to block blood vessel growth that causes the disease.

Imagine a future where our bodies contain a variety of tiny robots, keeping us healthy from the inside.