Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle
1–10 of 47 posts
Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle
#2Is there anything besides (massive) engineering challenges standing between more advanced devices like this physically eating away at cancerous tumors in the same way physicians use special maggots for wound debridement?
Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle
#3Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...
Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle
#4Is there anything besides ( massive ) engineering challenges standing between more advanced devices like this physically eating away at cancerous tumors in the same way physicians use special maggots for wound debridement?
Can we get batteries that are small enough and powerful enough to do it? This example is powered by lasers, it looks like they have to shoot a laser first at the front legs then again at the back legs in order to get it to walk. If we are able to shoot a laser at the robot walking on the tumor without damaging the surrounding tissue, why not just shoot it at the tumor?
Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle
#5Not the headline we need to quell the vaccine conspiracy theories..
Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle
#6Is there anything besides ( massive ) engineering challenges standing between more advanced devices like this physically eating away at cancerous tumors in the same way physicians use special maggots for wound debridement?
Can we get batteries that are small enough and powerful enough to do it? This example is powered by lasers, it looks like they have to shoot a laser first at the front legs then again at the back legs in order to get it to walk. If we are able to shoot a laser at the robot walking on the tumor without damaging the surrounding tissue, why not just shoot it at the tumor?
They could be powered by little rectennas, think RFID tag. Hit the bots with a radio frequency and it indict a charge and they power on and do their thing. Turn the radio off and they go inert.
So they could be injected into a tumor and powered by an external radio source.
In they're only powered by light a fiber optic filament could be injected in the activation site. So long as the light passes through enough tissue to power them you don't need to stick a halogen bulb up someone's butt.
Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle
#7Is there anything besides ( massive ) engineering challenges standing between more advanced devices like this physically eating away at cancerous tumors in the same way physicians use special maggots for wound debridement?
The challenge is getting them to stop eating once the tumors are gone.
Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle
#8Is there anything besides ( massive ) engineering challenges standing between more advanced devices like this physically eating away at cancerous tumors in the same way physicians use special maggots for wound debridement?
It's still not a given that we have universal markers for cancers; cancers evolve in each patient in a variety of ways, making it hard to come up with a single protocol that works for everyone. Hence lots of work is needed on the biology part.
Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can we get batteries that are small enough and powerful enough to do it? This example is powered by lasers, it looks like they have to shoot a laser first at the front legs then again at the back legs in order to get it to walk. If we are able to shoot a laser at the robot walking on the tumor without damaging the surrounding tissue, why not just shoot it at the tumor?
They could be powered by little rectennas, think RFID tag. Hit the bots with a radio frequency and it indict a charge and they power on and do their thing. Turn the radio off and they go inert. So they could be injected into a tumor and powered by an external radio source. In they're only powered by light a fiber optic filament could be injected in the activation site. So long as the light passes through enough tissu…
Hard to do that when the antenna size is correlated with the frequency you can use. Tiny micro bots would need really high frequency signals
Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle
#10Is there anything besides ( massive ) engineering challenges standing between more advanced devices like this physically eating away at cancerous tumors in the same way physicians use special maggots for wound debridement?
I believe they are working on this and the code name is grey goo.