brief story
Live ultrasound footage shows a microrobot tumbling through a colon in vivo.
Purdue University video/Elizabeth Niedert and Chenghao Bi
A rectangular robot as tiny as a few human hairs can travel throughout a colon by doing back flips, Purdue University engineers have demonstrated in live animal models. Why the back flips? Because the goal is to use these robots to transport drugs in humans, whose colons and other organs have rough terrain. Side flips work, too.
Why a back-flipping robot to transport drugs? Getting a drug directly to its target site could remove side effects, such as hair loss or stomach bleeding, that the drug may otherwise cause by interacting with other organs along the way.
The microrobot can be seen just to the right of the “U” in United States on this U.S. penny.
Purdue University image/Georges Adam
