Tiny robots with a big impact: microrobots for single-cell handling

This is crazy: my initial thought was that the first figure was some kind of diagram, but it is a microscopy photo of the actual physical system they have built!

The "micro-robots" are constructed by two-photon polymerization and actuated by laser tweezers grabbing onto "handholds". This avoids the laser heating up the biological specimens.

Note: two-photon polymerization is not not the same as what resin 3D printers use.

Paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.202401...

Nice tech. This is the kind of innovation that will get commercial attention and may come out in the next few years as a multimillion dollar product sold to biopharma.

The current microfluidics and optical tweezer systems are slow and cummbersome and not very efficient yet already costing millions. This will probably double the price...

another alternative to optical tweezers are electrophoresis based microfluidics systems, especially for applications which require better thermal properties. You can sort, hold and rotate individual cells. As i left this field more than 10 years ago and this is not mentioned as main alternative i assume the method did not gain wide adoption however…

Staggering how close we're getting to this future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwBm8fyLAsQ

I have this idea of creating a nano/micro bot of sorts that will replace hair root, and grow hairs using the nutrients (chemical) available in the blood stream or applied topically from time to time.

I know there are more important problems to solve than male pattern baldness, but somehow I think, in my limited understanding, replicating hair follicles should be easier than growing organs in labs.

Reminds me of this episode of The Outer Limits https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0667978/

> A desperate dying man injects himself with experimental nanobots that can supposedly cure anything. It works, but then his body starts to hideously mutate. He asks his soon-to-be brother-in-law, who invented the nanobots, for help.

I think it's worth pointing out that this (and all micro robots I know of) are not actual robots as you might think of them, more of a tiny hand for a large robot that consists of laser (or sometimes magentic) control modules with computers, displays, human in the loop, etc.

First time I hear of this tech

We are the Borg. Resistance is futile.