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These microscopic robots can swim through your eyeball fluids
Saturday, November 8, 2014 4:43
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These microscopic robots can swim through your eyeball fluids
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We’ve all been hoping and praying that scientists would one day come up with some microscopic robots that could swim through our eyeball fluids and help heal our poorly eyes.
Thankfully, that day is almost upon us.
Give praise to the scientists at the beautifully-named Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems over in Germany, because they’ve won the race.
They’ve fashioned robotic scallops so small that they can barely be seen by the naked eye, which is just as well because that’s where they’re headed.
Alejandro Posada / MPI for Intelligent Systems
The micro-robots have been designed to mimic the movement of live scallops in water
Our bodies contain viscous liquids that can grow thicker or thinner, and the scallop swimming method of moving backwards and forwards is the best way to move through those liquids.
You all knew that, right?
The micro-scallops don’t require battery power either – they are propelled towards their target area using an external magnetic field.
So what will the microscopic robot scallops do?
That’s where it all starts to get a bit vague – the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems scientists aren’t completely sure.
They’re hoping that their tiny inventions will become a reference design for others to use as they develop medical technologies.
Essentially, we’re halfway there – we’ve got the scallops that can swim through our eye fluid, but we don’t know what they’ll do once they get to the poorly bits.
Science – it’s always moving and flowing, just like our viscous bodily fluids.
Source: http://nesaranews.blogspot.com/2014/11/these-microscopic-robots-can-swim.html
