--- title: "This Robot Is So Tiny You Could Fit Ten of Them on a Single Period" description: "Cornell scientists developed a robot so tiny that it's invisible to the human eye — and they say it could someday hunt for cancer inside your body." date: "2020-09-29" modified: "2020-09-29" authors: - name: "Dan Robitzski" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/robot-tiny-fit-ten-period" categories: - "Robotics" - "Robots and Machines" tags: - "medical devices" - "robots" - "the digest" --- # This Robot Is So Tiny You Could Fit Ten of Them on a Single Period ![Cornell scientists developed a robot so tiny that it's invisible to the human eye — and they say it could someday hunt for cancer inside your body.]() *\Image: Cornell University\* ## Jitterbug A team of Cornell University scientists developed a new robot — so small that it's invisible to the naked eye — that they hope will someday crawl around [inside the human body]() and hunt for disease. The robots themselves are little more than microchips attached to four [origami-inspired]() legs, *[BBC News ]()*[reports](). But their simplicity — the engineers can manufacture 1 million of the bots every week, each one steered by beaming a laser at its feet — gives the team hope that they'll become a useful medical tool. *BBC News* published a [video]() of the robots wiggling around, and it's highly recommended. ## New Legs The hardest part, the team told *BBC News*, wasn't necessarily building a microscopic robot, but rather giving such a tiny machine a way to actually move around. "People have become very good at shrinking computer chips to microscopic dimensions," Cornell physicist Itai Cohen told *BBC News*. "The problem was that there weren't any legs that would work at that scale that could connect to these microchips. We invented a new technology \[that's\] essentially the legs for these robotic brains." ## Hunter Killers So far, the team is celebrating the tiny robots as an achievement and development all of their own. But someday, Cohen hopes that they could serve as medical devices that root around for signs of disease. "You could imagine having these as little microsurgery devices," he told the *BBC*. "You inject these robots in, they locally track down either bacteria or maybe a tumor cell and then they go snip it up and destroy it." **READ MORE:** [Scientists create a microscopic robot that ‘walks’]() \[*BBC News*\] **More on tiny robots:** *[Surgeons Just Sent a Tiny, Autonomous Bot Into a Heart Valve]()* ## Author Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California. ### Author social links [Twitter]()