Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Microrobot To Swim Like Bacteria With Flagellar Propeller
Tiny microrobots are under development at Monash University in Australia; a remarkable micromotor will allow them to swim using a flagellar propeller, just like the E. coli bacterium shown below.
(E. coli bacterium powered by flagella)
Dr. James Friend's goal is to build a device no wider than 250 microns - that's the width of two human hairs - that would be capable of swimming through the human body.
He and his team have already built a linear motor the size of a salt crystal. With a $300,000 grant from the Australian Research Council, Dr. Friend believes that his team will be able to reduce the motor to the necessary size within three years.
(Dr. James Friend with micromotor apparatus)
According to Dr. Friend, the main difference between the microrobot motor and a conventional electromagnetic type is that the latter spins much faster but has much less torque. In an email interview with Technovelgy.com, he remarked:
"The swimming robot idea in and of itself has indeed been around a long time---since at least the 1950's anyway, and our motor is of a scale and has the performance characteristics needed to actually make this sort of thing possible.A design for the prototype microrobot is shown below; Dr. Friend states "We've operating larger mm-sized prototypes of the motor, and have a fairly good handle on the analysis, which turns out to be quite complicated for twisted-beam structures."Regarding performance, as electromagnetic (EM) motors are reduced in size, they tend to have far higher rotation speeds: a typical 3 mm diameter EM motor will spin at over 20,000 rpm. Worse, the torque of such motors could be measured in micronewton-mm, only useful if one also employs a gearbox. We're using ultrasonic motor technology here, which offer higher torques at lower speeds. Traditionally that has always been the limitation of any of this technology: the motor. If you pick up a typical electronic parts catalogue, you'll find all sorts of sensors and electrical components, but very few of them actually produce physical motion. Those that do are certainly not solid state, and this is a need we're hoping to address."
(Microrobot design [Dr. James Friend])
The micromotor that Dr. Friend and his team have designed for their propulsion system should be smaller overall than a similar microrobot propulsion system described earlier this month by Dr. Moshe Shoham (see Propulsion System for 'Fantastic Voyage' Robot). Dr. Friend points out that his team has a "motor suitable for his [Shoham's] or our propulsion system that is far smaller than the technology he's [Shoham's] wanting to use."
Ultimately, tiny microrobots would give surgeons the ability to avoid traumatic and risky procedures in some cases. A remotely-controlled microrobot would extend a physician's ability to diagnose and treat patients in a minimally invasive way.
Other sources for this story include this article and this Monash University press release.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 11/29/2006)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 2 )
Related News Stories - (" Robotics ")
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.' - Rog Philips, 1950.
Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
Blue Collar AI Goes To Work To Mine Its Own Crypto
Blue collar bot.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'
US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
