‘Soft micro-robots’ could do biopsies, deliver drugs

AT The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a team working in a new area called soft robotics is developing tiny, self-folding devices that could one day be used to perform biopsies or precisely deliver drugs inside living tissue.

     Soft robotics is a new area of research that is attracting interest from many fields. It uses soft and deformable structures to enable robotic systems to work in uncertain and dynamic environments; for example, to grasp and manipulate unknown objects, move about in rough terrains, and – as in the case of this new study – deal with living cells inside human bodies.

   Another exciting area that is applying soft materials to robotic systems is more visionary research, such as self-repairing, growing and self-replicating robots.

   However, as far as medical applications are concerned, soft robotics is still very new, so much of current research concerns itself with testing new materials and looking at potential applications rather than producing devices that are ready for clinical trials.

   The team behind the new study made and tested a new material by using it to make “self-folding microgrippers” that they believe could one day allow surgeons to perform minimally invasive biopsies or deliver drugs to precise locations inside the body via remote control.

     The researchers report their work in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Microgrippers that can wrap around and remove cells from tissue

    The self-folding microgrippers – which look like sea stars with six arms that can fold into themselves – are made of a hydrogel that swells and shrinks in response to changes in temperature, acidity and light.