Universities and research centers around the world compete to create the best millirobot, millimetric robot, with the intention that it be inserted into our body and be capable of administering medications or acting directly on an ailment. Most of these very small robots are made to move thanks to magnetic fields, for which the force of a scanner is used. magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Stanford University has presented Nature Communications a millirobot created by the mechanical engineer Renee Zhao. By controlling the magnetic fields that are applied to them, the engineers are able to make them move in one direction, jump or overcome obstacles. Zhao and his colleagues have made them capable of jumping ten times their own length.
His new wireless amphibious origami millirobot with turning ability it can slide across uneven surfaces in an organ such as the stomach, and it can swim through our body fluids. You can do all this by carrying a medication until you reach the area where you have to administer it. That is, it is applied where it is needed, it is not necessary for the medicine to travel throughout the body. The millirobot carries a highly concentrated medicine and applies it where it is needed.
According to its designers this robot millimeter uses its ability to fold, like an accordion, to squeeze out the medicine it must administer. Its design includes a hole that facilitates the loading of objects; It can either retrieve objects from the stomach, for example, or it can carry cameras inside the body, which might facilitate some diagnoses.
Millirobots offer the advantage of operating in confined and hard-to-reach spaces where their flexibility allows them to adapt well. The main difficulty is its manufacture. This problem has been solved by the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the City University of Hong Kong (CityU).
Chinese researchers have developed a reprogrammable, disintegrable, and biocompatible magnetic binder spray that can easily turn inanimate objects into these tiny robots. It is applied to materials that are shaped according to the destination of the millimetric robot in our body.