“Researchers have built a tiny robot that can move through blood vessels, deliver a dose of drugs to a precise spot, and then dissolve. The robots hit their target in more than 95 percent of tests in pigs and sheep, offering a possible way to treat disorders like strokes or brain tumors without exposing the entire body to powerful chemicals,” reports The Doomslayer.
Nature reports:
A remote-controlled robot the size of a grain of sand can swim through blood vessels to deliver drugs before dissolving into the body. The technology could allow doctors to administer small amounts of drugs to specific sites, avoiding the toxic side effects of body-wide therapies.
The microrobots — guided by magnetic fields — work in blood vessels in pigs and sheep, researchers showed in a paper published in Science on 13 November.
The system has yet to be trialled in people, but it shows promise because it works in a roughly human-sized body, and because all its components have already been shown to be biocompatible, says Bradley Nelson, a mechanical engineer at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, who co-led the work.
Nanorobots are also being used to fight cancer. “In a major advancement in nanomedicine, Arizona State University scientists…have successfully programmed nanorobots to shrink tumors by cutting off their blood supply.” Scientists have also developed tiny robots made of human cells to repair damaged cells.
Robots are also saving lives by doing difficult and dangerous tasks. German robots hunted the North Sea for tens of thousands of unexploded World War II bombs.
Self-driving cars and robotaxis are spreading, which will save more lives, because self-driving cars are much less likely to get into accidents than human drivers. Driverless trucks are now on the road in Texas.
