All-terrain microrobot flips through a live colon

Filed in by on October 15, 2020 • views: 180

2020-10-15 23:01:24

A rectangular robot as tiny as a few human hairs can travel throughout a colon by doing back flips, MSRAL researchers have demonstrated in live animal models. Why the back flips? Because the goal is to use these robots to transport drugs in humans, whose colons and other organs have rough terrain. Side flips work, too. Why a back-flipping robot to transport drugs? Getting a drug directly to its target site could remove side effects, such as hair loss or stomach bleeding, that the drug may otherwise cause by interacting with other organs along the way.  The study, published in the journal Micromachines, is the first demonstration of a microrobot tumbling through a biological system in vivo.

This work has been picked up by a number of news outlets, such as:  


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