Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Tiny Fantastic Voyage Inspired Robots Are Starting To Get Reasonably Mature

Posted by samzenpus on from the getting-small dept.

szotz writes: No shrinking machine in an underground military lab (as far as we know). And no Raquel Welch. Still there is a growing microrobotics movement underway, looking at ways that tiny, untethered robots might be used to perform medical interventions in the human body. There have been piecemeal reports for years now of various designs, such as microscallops that can swim through the eye and bots that can be pushed around by bacteria flagella. This article in IEEE Spectrum gives a round-up of recent progress and looks at some of the difficulties that arise when you try to make things tiny and still have them retain a modicum (or give them more than a modicum) of function.

27 comments

  1. Tiny robots will cure cancer by Spy+Handler · · Score: 1

    by roaming around the body and killing cancer cells.

    You heard it here first.

    1. Re:Tiny robots will cure cancer by sexconker · · Score: 1

      The robots would rather kill everything.

    2. Re:Tiny robots will cure cancer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, I heard it first in Kurzweil's book, The Age of Spiritual Machines ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Spiritual_Machines ). I heard a lot of things there that I'd never heard before, but have come to pass in the 16 years since I read it. I'm sure he heard it somewhere too.

  2. Brilliant sci-fi (Fantastic Voyage) by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That movie was sci-fi at its best: mostly plausible*, educational, entertaining, suspenseful, memorable, timeless, and it made you think. And it had Raquel Welch!

    * Except maybe for the shrunken human passengers part, but in the near future, remote "virtual" control operators may play similar roles the way military drone operators do now. They may end up having to make quick decisions in difficult circumstances in terms of the patient's life and say limitations of batteries etc. on potentially patient-customized probe(s).

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  3. Isaac facepalming himself in the grave by rubycodez · · Score: 2

    Isaac Asimov called that novel of his a huge mistake, too much was bad scientifically with it

    1. Re: Isaac facepalming himself in the grave by steveha · · Score: 1

      Maybe Isaac Asimov was unhappy with his novelization of the movie, bit I like it. It is the one example I have ever read where the novelization of a movie improved on the movie.

      There is a bunch of stuff in the movie that is just there, not explained. Why will the submarine stay tiny for only 60 minutes? Where does the sub go at the end? Asimov came up with reasonable explanations.

      There was one bit from the movie that was just too stupid, so Asimov just omitted it. Someone brought a little box onboard the sub, and dialog explained that it contained an atomic particle to power the nuclear reactor. "We are going to be so small that all we will need is one particle..."

      Hmm, now I kind of want to watch the movie again.

      Late in his life, Asimov wrote a sequel. Since I loved the first one, I tried to read the sequel, but it bored me and I never finished it.

      --
      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    2. Re:Isaac facepalming himself in the grave by 0123456 · · Score: 1

      Pfft. I bought the ebook recently to read it again, and, given the source material, it's a pretty good novel. As steveha mentioned, Asimov fixed many of the stupid elements of the movie in his novelization, even if he had little choice about leaving in a few of the absurdities (like, well, the whole idea of the miniature submarine).

  4. "Starting To Get Reasonably Mature"... by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    1.Starting 2.Reasonably 3.Mature. might want to give it some time.

    1. Re:"Starting To Get Reasonably Mature"... by sabbede · · Score: 1

      I think I'm reasonably mature now. Just turned 38.

  5. Falicy Is Obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    No way could Rachel Welch's boobs be shrunk that small. Ergo, no way.

    1. Re:Falicy Is Obvious by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      And at age 74, not only will she no longer be as mobile as she was then ("My cane's stuck in the cell wall!") but the other crew will be less enthusiastic about pulling the rogue antibodies off her than they were in the movie.

    2. Re:Falicy Is Obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://ia.media-imdb.com/image...

      doesn't look like 74 but plastic sturgeons can perform miracles.

    3. Re:Falicy Is Obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even though her boobs were shrunk, but they were still big!

    4. Re:Falicy Is Obvious by ChrisMaple · · Score: 2

      Oh good grief. Take a good look at the many photos available on the internet. She's not larger than average.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
    5. Re:Falicy Is Obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      thanks for sharing :)

      vimax

  6. what will you treat with these robots by Hrrrg · · Score: 1

    What exactly do people hope to treat with these things? You can't treat pneumonia or diabetes. You can't treat dementia. You can't treat cancer (trust me on this - the obstacles are mind-boggling). You can't treat COPD or any kind of endocrine disorder. You might be able to treat blood clots (heart attacks, strokes) and atherosclerosis. Maybe. What does the article say:

    "deliver a highly targeted dose of drugs or radioactive seeds" - hmm we can already do this, and much more easily.
    "clear a blood clot" - okay, that would be good. Although, it would have to work very fast. (Then how do you get the robots out again?)
    "perform a tissue biopsy" - hmm, already easily done. Plus you need a reasonable large sample (the bigger the better) - how do you get the sample out of the body after you have it?
    "even build a scaffold on which new cells could grow" Hmm, first you would have to destroy whatever tissue is already there to make space. Then where do the new cells come from? I don't think so...

    1. Re:what will you treat with these robots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why can't they treat cancer? or do you mean along the lines of 'revert the cell to nominal function' as opposed to outright killing it?

      On the topic of "what else could they do", they could also go around turning off that aging switch everyone seems so hype about recently

    2. Re:what will you treat with these robots by iMadeGhostzilla · · Score: 1

      They don't necessarily have to treat, but can act as a seeing eye into what's happening in the body. Especially if they are actually tiny nanobots, capable of flowing to any part of the body and self-organizing into a vision device that takes images and wirelessly sends them to the instrument outside of the body. OK that's from Michael Crichton's "Prey."

  7. Oh damn! by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 1

    And I was so looking forward to Raquel Welsh's boobs rubbing up against the interior walls of my arteries.

  8. Ever heard of the FDA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sorry, hate to burst anyone's bubble, but these robots will never take off legally (illegally is a different story). There is no way in hell the FDA will ever allow a device that can, and probably will, cause a stroke to be injected into Americans. Soon as it happens in Europe or elsewhere (Russia) they will be banned. How do I know? Because I work trying to get much less dangerous medical device through the FDA and it is damn hard.....

  9. Must be funding time by kuzb · · Score: 1

    We get to hear about micro and nano robots every year or two, but nothing practical ever comes out of it. It's like they pop up every so often just to hype up the tech that still hasn't done anything useful to keep the funding rolling.

    --
    BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
  10. New world by Mats+Svensson · · Score: 1

    Cool! They are going to fix everyon ...um everything!

  11. That funky bots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Come along and ride on a tiny fantastic voyage, to the land of bots, bots, bots. To the land of bots, to the land of bots. To the laaaand of bots,

  12. What happens when they reverse aging? by sabbede · · Score: 1
    Oh, wait.... Wrong article.

    Or is it?

    [Dun dun daaaaaaaa]

  13. "Starting To Get Reasonably Mature" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Spin language for "not at all".

  14. Yeah but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this is how the Borg started.