The robot the size of a spider to perform surgery inside the human body
How would you like to be operated on… by a robot the size of a spider? Researchers in the United States have developed a new method of making flexible microrobots just millimetres in size using soft materials – which could be used inside the human body to perform surgery.
Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Boston University, have released a video showing the soft spider robot they’ve developed – the smallest multifunctional flexible robot ever made. Even smaller than a penny piece, it’s designed to look like an Australian peacock spider, with moving body parts and a coloured abdomen and eyes. The video explained how the researchers’ new methods had enabled them to make a more complex robot, both in terms of its design and what it can do.
Until now, microrobots could only change shape or move in one direction, but this spider can move and change shape and colour in a variety of different ways. The robots could also be used for micromanipulation, in spaces which are too dangerous for humans to work in, and in wearable devices – doing jobs which, at the moment, rigid robots cannot do.
“The smaller sizes and flexibility of these robots could enable an entirely new approach to endoscopy and microsurgery,” said Donald Ingber, Wyss Institute founding director and professor of bioengineering at SEAS.
“The smallest soft robotic systems still tend to be very simple, with usually only one degree of freedom, which means that they can only actuate one particular change in shape or type of movement,” explained Sheila Russo, co-author of the study and assistant professor at Boston University. “This spider has 18 degrees of freedom.”
The spider is made from a single piece of elastic silicone rubber, and was made using a combination of lithography, laser work, and a technique called injection-induced self-folding, where resin is used to bend the spider into shape. As the resin hardens, the spider’s shape becomes fixed.
Tiny channels of fluid inside the spider were used to colour its eyes and abdomen and to make its legs move so it “walks”. The whole process can be performed in just a few days. In full, the spider is known rather grandly as a Microfluidic Origami for Reconfigurable Pneumatic/Hydraulic (MORPH) device.
Robert Wood, co-leader of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics platform at the Wyss Institute and a professor at SEAS, said: “This new approach can pave the way towards achieving similar levels of complexity and functionality on this small scale as those exhibited by their rigid counterparts. In the future, it can also help us emulate and understand structure-function relationships in small animals much better than rigid robots can.”
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