Fantastic Voyage News Ahead
February 9, 2007
It would seem that the fantastic voyage has arrived, or is at least about to depart. Not, initially, on the nanoscale, but the microscale – two hairs wide – and quite small enough to tour the circulatory system. For those who have been the beneficiaries of rather larger intrusions into their orifices and plumbing this news will come as potentially rather personal cause for exhilaration. It has always seemed curious that as our chips get smaller and uber-powerful we have been unable to let loose microscopic explorers into the tubes that run through our bodies.
According to this report, the key lies in the development of a piezoelectric motor, other efforts to design sufficiently powerful outboards (or inboards) for the cruising craft having failed.
Of course, two whole hairs is huge in nano terms. But it’s one small step for man . . .
An international team of scientists is developing what they say will be the world’s first microrobot — as wide as two human hairs — that can swim through the arteries and digestive system.
The scientists are designing the 250-micron device to transmit images and deliver microscopic payloads to parts of the body outside the reach of existing catheter technology.
It will also perform minimally invasive microsurgeries, said James Friend of the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory at Australia’s Monash University, who leads the team. The researchers hope the device will reduce the risks normally associated with delicate surgical procedures.
While others have tried and failed to create microrobots for arterial travel, Friend believes his team will succeed because they are the first to exploit piezoelectric materials — crystals that create an electric charge when mechanically stressed — in their micromotor design.
“People have tried various techniques, including electromagnetic motors,” Friend said. “But at this scale, electromagnetic motors become impractical because the magnetic fields become so weak. No one has taken the trouble to build piezoelectric motors at the same scales, for this kind of application.”
Funded by the Australian Research Council, Friend’s team is tweaking larger versions of the device, and expects to have a working prototype later this year and a completed version by 2009.
The scientists say stroke, embolism and vascular-disease patients should be the first to benefit from the new technology.
The tiny robot, small enough to pass through the heart and other organs, will be inserted using a syringe. Guided by remote control, it will swim to a site within the body to perform a series of tasks, then return to the point of entry where it can be extracted, again by syringe.
