If you’re being told by someone in 20 years ago that you can create a robot which has a size as small as bacteria, the people might be said some words right in front your face, “You must be a psycho, as it’s impossible!”

Well, guess what! The brilliant ETH Zurich researchers have put on their own efforts. In the end, they’re able to create world’s first medical micro-robots has a size as small as bacteria.

Check out the above figure, you might find that the robot is somewhat like a form of Flagella sp. Yep, it isn’t April’s Fool and you didn’t get it wrong here. This is the latest medical micro-robots, which has an average length of 5 – 15 µm long. They’re in spiral shape, tiny head and can easily swim at a speed of up to one body length per second!

Honestly, you cannot even see the micro-robots at all, unless you’re observing them under a microscope. The researchers also have given a name for these medical micro-robots and they’re called “Artificial Bacterial Flagella (ABF)”.

Bradley Nelson, the professor at the Institute of Robotic and Intelligent Systems at ETH Zurich said that the ABFs could be a very useful technology to help cure various types of diseases in near future.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Biomedical Engineering, Robotics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.