In a 10,000 square foot clean room in Alberta, Canada, a small group of university engineering students have put their heads together to pioneer a technology barely visible to the human eye that could revolutionise medical care in years to come.
The University of Alberta (U of A) nanorobotics team, which has been working from the university’s nanoFAB, an open access micro- and nano-fabrication research facility that plays host to more than $25m worth of micromachining and nano-fabrication tools, has created a nano-scale robotic system wherein magnets are used to manipulate nano-scale ‘robots’ to move and perform certain tasks.
“The system is like a videogame,” explains team member Yang Gao, who is working on her master’s degree in chemical engineering. “The robot is a liquid droplet that contains magnetic nanoparticles and it moves in a magnetic field.”
First, the team injects a water droplet with iron oxide nanoparticles into oil. The droplet holds its shape because it is encased in a surfactant – a soap-like formula that repels water on one side and attracts water on the other (this technology – called ferrofluid – was provided by advanced materials company Ferrotec).
Then, the droplet is placed in a magnetic field and, using a joystick, the team is able control the robot, making it travel along a specific route, navigate an obstacle course or push micro-sized objects from one point to another.
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By GlobalDataAll of this can barely be seen by the untrained eye, as the droplet only measures 400-500 micrometres.
Early days: proving the technology
The team demonstrated the concept behind the technology in May 2013 when they put their nanobot system up against other student teams from around the world at the ICRA Robot Challenges at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Karlsruhe, Germany.
They were presented with two challenges: a micro-assembly challenge, where the team was asked to control the robot with a joystick to arrange micro-scale objects that measure 200×300 micrometres into a particular order – a tiny game of Tetris, essentially – and a mobility challenge, for which they had to write a programme beforehand that told the robot what to do during the competition.
While the team performed poorly in the second challenge, they placed third in the micro-assembly challenge, despite the fact that they were the only team to use a liquid rather than a more traditional solid robot.
“The poor performance in the second challenge was due to dim lighting at the competition site; our programme couldn’t detect our robot,” Gao explains.
Lifesaving nano-robots: a realistic possibility?
Of course, the competition was merely a fun way to demonstrate that technologies based on manipulating and precisely controlling nano-size droplets are now really becoming a reality, albeit in their most basic form. But systems like this also have some very significant, potentially life-saving implications for biomedical fields.
“There are applications in biomedical research and micromanipulation,” Gao confirmed. “It’s hard to precisely place micro-scale objects, and this robot allows for easy manipulation.”
This could be particularly relevant in the growing field of targeted drug delivery. “Since the robots are magnetic, they can be guided and held at a particular location in the body,” Gao explained. “The robot can then release drugs only at that location or be irradiated to heat up and damage unwanted tissues.”
The students at U of A are by no means the first team to come up with a nano-scale system designed to release drugs at particular points in the human body with the help of magnetic fields. In fact, there have been many attempts over the years.
In 2002, a team at Tohoku University developed tiny, magnetically-driven spinning screws intended to swim along veins and carry drugs to infected tissues or burrow into tumours, while in 2005, a group at the Nanorobotics Laboratory of Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal used variable MRI magnetic fields to generate forces on an untethered micro-robot containing ferromagnetic particles, developing sufficient propulsive power to direct the small device through the human body.
Other tiny technologies are also under development with the ultimate aim of performing minimally invasive microsurgeries in parts of the body outside the reach of existing technology.
A group at the Micro-Nanophysics Research Laboratory at Monash University in Australia is working on a 250-micron micro-robot that could eventually deliver a payload of expandable glue to the site of a damaged cranial artery, a procedure that is usually fraught with risk because of the area’s inaccessibility for catheters.
Something different: liquid robots
But the system that has been developed at U of A is set apart from the majority of other solutions under development because of one crucial factor – their robot is liquid rather than solid.
“This means it’s very easy to change the size of the robot – one can simply inject a different volume when making the robot,” Gao says. “A liquid robot is a lot more suitable than a solid robot for biomedical purposes, too, as a solid robot can’t release drugs easily and tends to be more damaging inside the human body. Finally, the liquid robot is easy to control as it doesn’t travel too fast.”
Of course, there are drawbacks too. “Liquid robots are harder to transport and less stable,” Gao acknowledges. “We were worried if they would stay intact because of the plane’s turbulence and vibrations on the way to the competition.”
Clearly, there is still a long way to go before this technology can be translated into something that can travel through the human body. “There needs to be in-vitro and then clinical trials,” Gao says. “It is still many, many years ahead.” Nonetheless, the potential is definitely there, and Gao is optimistic. “It’s a promising concept that could one day save lives.”
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