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DENVER, Colo. (Ivanhoe Newswire) – Robots have changed the medical field, and now, those robots are becoming smaller than ever before. They’re called microbots, also known as nanorobots. They’re microscopic in scale and thousands of them could be delivered by swallowing a single pill. They could one day deliver life-saving medications to hard-to-reach places throughout the body.

The Fantastic Voyage! Microrobots deployed inside a body was once science fiction and only imagined in the movies. But now it’s becoming the basis of real science inside this lab.

“Medical microrobots are, essentially, microscale devices. So, we’re talking devices five to 10 times thinner than the human hair,” said Wyatt Shields, IV, PhD, a chemical and biological engineer at University of Colorado.

A team of engineers at the University of Colorado, Boulder has designed a new class of tiny, self-propelled robots that can zip through a body at incredible speeds. The bots are made out of polymer materials that are biocompatible using a technology similar to 3D printing. They look like small rockets with three tiny fins.

“And the result is that these robots move really fast. So, on the order of several hundred body lengths per second, I think 120 or 140 body lengths per second. So, that would be equivalent to a six-foot-tall person running 400 miles per hour,” added Shields.

Although there’s still more testing to do, this work could one day turn what was once science fiction into science that changes the world. Right now, the microbots leave the body through the urine, but the team is working to make them completely biodegradable so they will dissolve inside the body after releasing the medication.

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