Could tiny robots be the next best thing to healthcare??

Tiny Robots are the latest and greatest medical discovery!

• A new discovery has been made in the medical word, they have created microscopic robots that will be able to go into a patients body and bloodstream!
• These robots will be able to..
•  perform surgeries
•  unclog arteries 
•  deliver medicine to the exact problem area

• These robots are called, Micro-swimmer Robots

• The Micro-swimmer Robots act like balls on a chain, they can move through liquid with the use of a rotating magnetic field!

(Above) Real picture of a micro-swimming robot!!

• These tiny robots can even break apart, into even smaller robots, then resemble themselves into a whole robot again. 

• Micro swimmer robots do not swim through the body like you and I can swim through a pool, in fact, its much harder and difficult for the robots to move therefore new technologies and techniques are necessary to get these robots moving through our bloodstream.

• Micro Swimmer robots also need to be under-control and know precisely what they must do inside the body. Scientist ideally want to create these robots so that they can perform multiple jobs, avoiding creating different specialized ones for each procedure. 

• Scientists have put those challenges to the test and created three different kinds of micro-swimmer robots for different tasks: 
• Flexible/Soft Micro-robots: these tiny robots are controlled by electric fields and will change shape with heat.
• Worm-like Micro-robots: these robots will be controlled by patterns of green-light and propel themselves
• Micro Scallop Micro-robots: these robots are free swimmers that can swim by themselves and amongst other robots.

• Soon the discovery was made that modular robots can be created with differing magnetic field allowing them to link, unlink, etc. With this discovery scientists come one step closer to creating a universal and versatile micro-robot that can heal, diagnose, and of course, treat!

• Following this discovery Micro-Swimmer Robots were created!! A team of scientists created these Micro-Swimmer Robots by putting together modular pieces, circular magnetic beads, that are able to link together and unlink apart. After much research and testing these Scientists found that the differing lengths of these Micro-Swimmer Robots, behaved in different ways. They could control these robots length and movement by a rotating magnetic field outside of the body.
• Longer Micro-Swimmer Robots can swim faster!

(Above) Rotating Magnetic Fields, like the ones that control how the Micro-Swimmer Robots move!!




• Controlling theses tiny Micro-Swimming Robots has been most effective by using magnetic fields. These magnetic fields attract the nearby magnets (aka the magnetic beads that the robots are made from) and allow them to move toward the magnet. Therefore Scientists believe this is the most effective way to control these Micro-Swimmer Robots because it is not harmful to the body or the robot!

• The linking and unlinking of these Micro-Swimmer robots is probably the coolest innovation throughout this discovery. Scientist discovered that while the Micro-Swimmer Robots were inside the body they could change its length, therefore changing its speed, and unlink the robot into two different robots. This will be extremely useful because now these two robots can perform different procedures and then come back and resemble themselves into one whole robot!
• However scientists later found that resembling these Micro-Swimming Robots is very difficult due to the unpredictable state that these robots are in. When these magnetic beads are in a "repulsive area" they will not link up with other beads to resemble. Scientists still have not found a way to predict the state and area these beads are in, therefore resembling these Micro- Swimmer robots works sometimes but not 100% of the time!

• The invention and discovery of the Micro-Swimmer Robots will seriously bring about great change in the medical world!! 

(Above) A video explaining the discovery and showing video of the Micro-Swimmer's linking and unlinking!


• These robots will be able to deliver medicine straight to the problem or affected area and immediately treat this area. Unlike before, clogged arteries won't required a stent or a ballooning of the artery, but rather just a tiny robot to go in and unclog it! These robots could even be used to kill cancer cells directly without affecting the rest of the body like kemo-therapy does! It is quite amazing that these tiny robots will help tremendously by creating lower risk procedures and certainly more convenient and permanent treatments!

Lily Poor 

Mr. Gray

Physics. 1, Period: G

January 11, 2016