https://theconversation.com/five-of-the-worlds-tiniest-robots-184790
"Allow me to take you on a trip down my memory lane. As a young lad, a film I
saw captured my imagination:
Fantastic Voyage, a 1966 release about people
shrunk to microscopic size and sent into the body of an injured scientist to
repair his brain. The idea struck a chord with me. I envisioned one day science
would be able to create some sort of miniature machine that performs medical
procedures from the inside.
Fast forward several decades into the 21st century, when I started my career as
a robotics researcher taking inspiration from neuroscience to implement
artificial perception systems. I thought of robots as machines that range from
the size of a pet animal to big devices designed to carry out heavy-duty
chores. However, I soon started to hear the first hints about research into
miniature robots playing exactly the type of role the miniature scientists in
Fantastic Voyage acted out. Did this mean that what I imagined as a child was
about to come true?
Recently, a team of researchers from Stanford University, California, achieved
the first milestone towards the development of 7.8mm wide origami robots: a
proof-of- concept prototype. They dubbed it a millirobot. The robot uses the
folding/unfolding of Kresling origami to roll, flip and spin. These robots are
operated wirelessly using magnetic fields to move in narrow spaces and morph
their shape for medical tasks, such as disease diagnosis, drug delivery, and
even surgery. They are a part of a new trend in what is called “tiny robot”
research.
The range of technologies and uses for tiny robots is broad, from drones to
pills, and from surveillance and rescue to biomedicine."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
