Nano-robots revolutionize medicine

Robots are becoming smaller and are changing the medical field in new ways.

They’re called microbots or nano-robots, and they’re so small that thousands of them could fit in a single pill that you could swallow.

These bots could one day deliver life-saving treatments to hard to reach places in the body.

Microrobots deployed inside a body was once science fiction and only imagined in the movies, but now it’s becoming the basis of real science inside this lab.

“Medical microrobots are, essentially, microscale devices, so, we’re talking devices five to 10 times thinner than the human hair,” said Dr. Wyatt Shields, Chemical and Biological Engineer at University of Colorado Boulder.

A team of engineers at the university has designed a new class of tiny, self-propelled robots that can zip through a body at incredible speeds.

The bots are made out of polymer materials that are biocompatible using a technology similar to 3D printing. They look like small rockets with three tiny fins.

“And the result is that these robots move really fast, so, on the order of several hundred body lengths per second, I think 120 or 140 body lengths per second. So, that would be equivalent to a six-foot-tall person running 400 miles per hour,” Shields said.

Although there’s still more testing to do, this work could one day turn what was once science fiction into science that changes the world.

Right now, microbots leave your body when you use the bathroom and urinate.

A team is working to make them completely biodegradable so they will dissolve inside the body after releasing the medication.