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Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle

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Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle

#21

Post by shard »

gnramires wrote: post #15
andrewl wrote: post #2

Is 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?

Calling those robots is a bit misleading, because they lack self-control. Control logic we know is large for very small robots. If you want a micron-scale robot you only get about 100 transistors for its "intelligence"[1]. There are certainly things it could do, but probably not autonomously navigate, map and recognize tumors. We just don't have the expertise for those kinds of thing, at least not yet. A plethora of…

If you think of transistors as analog computational devices, 100 is not that small. There are animals with ~200-300 neurons, so it's at least within the range of possibility to have a fairly autonomous robot with only 100.

Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle

#22

Post by MarkLowenstein »

appler wrote: post #17

Michael Crichton - Prey https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0061703087/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_UHC...

K. Eric Drexler - Engines of Creation https://www.amazon.com/Engines-Creation-Nanotechnology-Libra...

Randomly chose this off the bookshelf at a Borders in 1990 or so...turned out to be the most exciting book I've ever read. Then Terminator 2 came out and was 10x as amazing because I saw how it COULD really happen.

Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle

#23

Post by jb775 »

willcipriano wrote: post #4
andrewl wrote: post #2

Is 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?

I'd think somehow turning heat energy into power would be ideal since human bodies naturally produce and regulate heat. Or maybe some sort of chemical breakdown where the energy could be relayed as a power source.

Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle

#24

Post by Nasrudith »

jb775 wrote: post #23
willcipriano wrote: post #4

Earlier 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?

I'd think somehow turning heat energy into power would be ideal since human bodies naturally produce and regulate heat. Or maybe some sort of chemical breakdown where the energy could be relayed as a power source.

That would make it worse not better as thr temperature differential is the power source. Something which binds to and cracks blood sugars would be closer in terms of exploiting bodily resources for the task but would still have many challenges at that scale.

Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle

#25

Post by joycian »

shard wrote: post #21
gnramires wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling those robots is a bit misleading, because they lack self-control. Control logic we know is large for very small robots. If you want a micron-scale robot you only get about 100 transistors for its "intelligence"[1]. There are certainly things it could do, but probably not autonomously navigate, map and recognize tumors. We just don't have the expertise for those kinds of thing, at least not yet. A plethora of…

If you think of transistors as analog computational devices, 100 is not that small. There are animals with ~200-300 neurons, so it's at least within the range of possibility to have a fairly autonomous robot with only 100.

A neuron contains thousands if not millions of transistor-equivalents in the form of gene level and ion level switches. I'm not saying that you couldn't do it with 100 transistors, or that everything in a neuron is needed for this application, but I just wanted to clarify.

Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle

#26

Post by ianai »

andrewl wrote: post #16
gnramires wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling those robots is a bit misleading, because they lack self-control. Control logic we know is large for very small robots. If you want a micron-scale robot you only get about 100 transistors for its "intelligence"[1]. There are certainly things it could do, but probably not autonomously navigate, map and recognize tumors. We just don't have the expertise for those kinds of thing, at least not yet. A plethora of…

Maybe the route toward what I'm envisioning (and hoping for) is genetically engineered or enhanced cells. Modify and existing system that already does a lot instead of trying to recreate a cell from the ground up.

I sense robots not made out of similar materials may be easier for dealing with a cancer. It’s “out of band” - cell’s for instance seem to communicate through chemicals so the robot cells are likely to respond (or not) to the things in the biological system.

As for more traditional robots with ~100 transistors, why do they need to be autonomous? Why not mesh network them and control them as drones?

Re: Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle

#30

Post by deepnotderp »

gnramires wrote: post #15
andrewl wrote: post #2

Is 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?

Calling those robots is a bit misleading, because they lack self-control. Control logic we know is large for very small robots. If you want a micron-scale robot you only get about 100 transistors for its "intelligence"[1]. There are certainly things it could do, but probably not autonomously navigate, map and recognize tumors. We just don't have the expertise for those kinds of thing, at least not yet. A plethora of…

I think the question that OP (and myself) is asking is "given Magic Robots (tm), could we essentially cure cancer?"

Obviously, as you note, there are enormous (or rather, extremely tiny, but very hard!) problems with this. However, it's not all doom and gloom.

I could imagine that going in the 3D dimension for example, could enable another 100X increase in transistor count. In addition, you shouldn't need to actually do the computation onboard for cancer applications, just transmit it via some method, say RF to an outside computer that can do the compute work. Finally, cells are something like 10-30 um in diameter, which gives a lot more room to play with than 1um (the linked paper has scale of about 100um I believe).

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