Advertisement
Science
ChinaScience

Chinese scientists’ powerful but soft micro robot could change the face of heart surgery

  • Soft-shelled ‘pill’ robot can be propelled along from the outside by a magnetic field, as internal liquid heats up to create never-before-seen powerful thrust
  • The robot can be used to treat or even create temporary vascular blockages for medical aims, research team says

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
3
Magnetic heating builds up huge pressure within the pill-like robot, creating a huge thrust that propels it along. Photo: Handout
Zhang Tong
A Chinese research team says it has created the world’s most powerful micro robot – a shape-shifting device driven by magnetic force that is able to travel within the human body and help address an array of health conditions.
The high-performance soft robot, which is just a millimetre long, can bounce or squirm within blood vessels to treat cardiovascular disease, among other potential applications, according to the researchers.

Traditional soft robots are constrained by small output forces and unable to meet surgical needs. In contrast, the newly developed robot can produce an output force of 70 Newtons – 10 million times higher than traditional ones – but without sacrificing its softness, the team says.

This amount of thrust can discharge a bullet out of an old rifle or lift 20 cans of Coke. The leap in performance takes scientists one step closer to solving real-world clinical problems, according to lead researchers Tang Yichao, at Tongji University in Shanghai, and Li Mingtong, at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, in Stuttgart, Germany.

Schematic illustration of the locomotion and inflation process. Photo: Tang Yichao
Schematic illustration of the locomotion and inflation process. Photo: Tang Yichao

The secret of its high performance lies in the structure of the robot, which looks like a pill from the outside.

Advertisement