A new class of tiny, self-propelled robots that can zip through liquid at speed
colorado.edu
colorado.edu
Incredible! So they're driven from outside the body and are just a delivery mechanism without electronics?
These things are 0.02mm ( 0.0008 inches) wide, ~1/100 millionth of a cubic centimeter, individual bubbles or even fairly large numbers of bubbles of that size aren’t a significant issue.
The major component in atmospheric air, nitrogen (N2), is already abundant in the blood too, so it isn't an issue. If I remember correctly, our bodies are generally in equilibrium with the outside air in terms of N2 partial pressure.
Admittedly, a small air bubble in the blood bypasses a lot of the specialized membranes our alveoli use to make their gas exchange, but blood itself can manage a bit of air just fine.
If you're asking about the nanorobot, however: The article says it's not yet biodegradable to the degree they want to make it.
In addition, a bubble shows surface tension. This is exactly the problem of divers who surface too fast: the excess of air dissolved in the blood due to higher pressure aggregates into bubbles.
EDIT: By excess of air I mean Nitrogen. We don't have proteins to bind gaseous Nitrogen.
Also another comment next to yours said 2-3cc.
This only applies to veinous blood.
You do not want arterial blood to be messed with generally at all, as far as I understand.
There are mechanisms to expel so called "foreign bodies", through the details are important (how long until they are detected, ...)
So you would supply bulk ultrasound energy to the organ or area you are treating, and these tiny machines would start to have complex interactions, communicate and locate themselves relative to one another, and coordinate to attack the tumor, deliver the drug, destroy amyloid plaque etc.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
A 200µm x 200µm x 100µm, 63nW, 2.4GHz Injectable Fully-Monolithic Wireless Bio-Sensing System
http://www.travisdeyle.com/publications/pdf/2017_rfic_implan...
This kind of stuff has also already been done with magnetic fields.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmNTFlRASYY (Fantastic Voyage, 1966)
Do you remember whether in the movie they explained why they can see outside the ship?
I don't remember if they tried to explain any of the "science" - rather doubt it. Maybe blood is clear between the red blood cells? Guess they had good lights on the sub too.
Flesh Gordon (campy porn version of Flash Gordon) is another recommended movie with similarly awful special effects !
The original book by Isaac Asimov probably had pretty accurate biology. Don't know how much the movie changed it.
It will trickle down though right like a rising tide lifts all boats
My first thought went to assassin nanytes that could be delivered in target's tea, target's swimming pool or spa, target's shower or bath, or even the rain if you're clever enough about it. They have to work out locomotion, but I'm sure they've got some bright people working on that already in most of the world's intelligence services. These kinds of devices would have the benefit of deniability, rendering attribution virtually impossible. And their delivery would involve far less risk and danger. Pretty sure we can all envision a multi modal version 20 years from now, making delivery trivial and zero risk.
I hope you guys are right though, and we use it as a medicine rather than a weapon. My gut just tells me we'll develop it as both, and the weapon will be far more effective.
> The team makes its microrobots out of materials called biocompatible polymers using a technology similar to 3D printing. The machines look a bit like small rockets and come complete with three tiny fins. They also include a little something extra: Each of the robots carries a small bubble of trapped air, similar to what happens when you dunk a glass upside-down in water. If you expose the machines to an acoustic field, like the kind used in ultrasound, the bubbles will begin to vibrate wildly, pushing water away and shooting the robots forward.
So it's essentially a small device that can be pushed around by an external field rather than an actual autonomous robot.
But a tiny bot sure sounds more exciting than "remote-controllable dust".
A robotic arm in a factory is also "a device that can be pushed around by an external field"
Last I checked, we have nano medicine with targeted delivery with limited success. I think some of these made it to market.
I assume we can make mm-scale things. Considering that this 20um item is in the news and isn't powered, maybe mm scale is where the current limit is?
But they are fixed.
I kind of find the distinction of 'robots' vs cells funny, as once you get down to the (sub)nanometer level one's intuition should flip: organic material acts stiffer and more lego-like than metals - which act more like unreliable putties. A "device" that becomes small enough is much more likely to be made of organic molecules than metallic molecules - cells ARE those futuristic robots...
The kinesin motor proteins are pretty cool too [1], but those are naturally occurring machines that I suspect we'll be imitating for a long time.
More seriously, I think that biology is better described and studied as applied nanotechnology. These are nano-scale, complex mechanical systems that are capable of manipulating their environment in an autonomous fashion. They're the science fiction nanobots we've been looking for all along!
Basically, nanotec bots that spin around on command are put into the bodies of people, so they can be made to spin around and dissolve them from the inside out.
I loved that book.
Neat concept, though
It's cool to see reality approaching such high-concept stuff.
Yeah, I guess we could also do that for cancer! Then we wouldn't need to invest so much resources making treatments for it....
Jokes aside, I don't know anything about painful bladder syndrome, but much like other illnesses, a cure is often much harder to develop. In the meantime, what we can do is develop treatments.
Plus, as the article hints at, there are so many other applications for it. When I read it, I read the current tests as a proof of concept. The sky is the limit with simple treatments that currently require surgeries or other invasive procedures that could be addressed here. An optimistic moonshot is teaching them to attack tumors.
All and all, if you couldn't tell, I'm really bullish on this tech.
Post Scriptum: I apologise if for some reason the above joke is found out of order.
OTOH, if they can be used to seek and destroy in-motion kidney stones, the inventors could become billionaires.
As per findings by the Mythbusters some number of years ago, the stream of pee is not unbroken.
> The Mythbusters tested the myth that you could be electrocuted by peeing on the 3rd rail. The myth was 'busted' as the stream would be broken up due to distance and there wouldn't be a continuous path for the electrical current to follow.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/10/03/02/1536218/mythbust...
Not sure how peeing specifically on a "3rd rail" is relevant. The distance seems more relevant, as the further away your pee-droplets reach, the further away they'll move from each other. But stand close enough and the stream will be unbroken.
The distance they tested is still pretty close.
Only when the test dummy was abnormally near was the circuit closed.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3pidli
So therefore, in normal circumstances you should be safe from nanobots swimming up your pee hole.
"Third rail" means the rail that is electrified (it is often literally the third rail as well): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail
Why do I get the impression we have a lot of non-native English posters here today?!
Against an overhead line, say if you're urinating from a bridge? That's 15-25 kV if it's rail. I would not dare risk my chances there - and most bridges I know have "piss shields" or generally raised walls to prevent people from trying.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromschiene#Nennspannungen_be...
Was just bringing it up because the stream would need to be unbroken in order for the nanobots to swim up it.