- SENDAI, Japan -- A microscopic
swimming robot unveiled by Chinese scientists could eventually be used
for drug delivery or to clear arteries in humans, say researchers.
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- The 3 millimetre-long triangular machine was constructed
by Tao Mei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, and colleagues
from the University of Science and Technology of China.
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- The craft is propelled using an external magnetic field
which controls its microscopic fins. The fins are made from an alloy that
contracts in response to application of the field. Applying the field quickly
makes the tiny submersible paddle forwards and gradually switching the
field off slowly moves the fins back to their original position.
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- It is possible to control the speed of the craft by altering
the resonant frequency of the magnetic field. The next stage is to build
a robot with fins that respond to different magnetic field resonances.
This would enable an operator to control the fin separately and steer the
robot around.
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- Early stage
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- Mei admits that the project is at an early stage but
believes remote controlled swimming machines could be used to deliver drugs
to a particular part of the human body, through the blood stream.
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- So far the Chinese scientists have tested a swimming
device measuring 3mm x 2mm x 0.4mm but are working a new model just 1 mm
long.
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- "We would like to make a 0.1mm one that could go
inside the bloodstream," Mei told New Scientist. "Maybe we can
make it even smaller using nanotechnology."
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- The team tested the device using magnetic fields of varying
intensity, to rule out the possibility that it was simply being pulled
by the field. They looked at the average speed and showed this could not
be a result of magnetism on its own.
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- Kin Fong Lei, a robotics researcher from the Chinese
University of Hong Kong, says this is the smallest swimming robot he has
seen and believes it could have a number of applications. One previously
reported swimming device, based on a cylindrical magnet, was 8mm long (New
Scientist print edition, June 2001).
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- "With this type of swimming robot we could bring
drugs to different parts of the human body more effectively," Lei
says. "It could become very important for biological applications."
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- The swimming bot was revealed on Friday at the international
conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), in Sendai, Japan.
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