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All-terrain microrobot flips through a live colon
Purdue University engineers have demonstrated that a robot as tiny as a few human hairs can travel throughout a colon. The goal of this NSF-funded research is to develop robots to transport drugs in humans, whose colons and other organs have rough terrain. 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. Since it is too small to carry a battery, the microrobot is powered and wirelessly controlled from the outside by a magnetic field.
Credit: Purdue University
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