Tuesday 20 January 2009

Miniature robots get motoring

Surgeons could soon be driving tiny robots around our bodies, thanks to the creation of miniature motors measuring just a quarter of a millimetre across.

Apparently, the lack of mini-motors - needed to propel the bots through the narrow passages of our bodies - has been holding this technology back for years. It sounds suspiciously like the 1986 film Innerspace to me!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not entirely sure if I like the thought of robots swimming round my bloodstream. Where do they go when they've finished looking? Do they just float around in your arteries for the rest of your life?

Anita@antenna said...

Will the scientists need to take a driving test?

Louis@Antenna said...

I hope so. I wonder how the immune system would react to a tiny machine travelling through the body. Maybe it would be coated with something to mask it from the body's defences?