NIGHTMARE FUEL
Scientists at the City University of Hong Kong have created a new robot. Upside: it could help deliver drugs inside the body, keeping patients healthier. Downside: it looks like a terrifying bug you wouldn't want anywhere near your insides.
The bot looks a cross between a caterpillar and a strip of Velcro, with ominously hairlike legs. Those legs, according to co-creator Wang Zuankai, are so that it can better navigate the various textures of your internal anatomy.
"The rugged surface and changing texture of different tissues inside the human body make transportation challenging," he said in a press release. "Our multi-legged robot shows an impressive performance in various terrains" (yes he just called the tissues in your body "terrains," it's fine).
PILL PUSHER
It's not clear how the robot will get inside you — probably by swallowing it, right? that seems like the best of a number of not great options — but once it's there, the idea is that it'll crawl through your "body fluids such as blood or mucus," according to the press release.
Then, once it reaches its destination — the release suggested a designated spot in your digestive system, for instance — it'll release medicine.
FROM HELL
In all seriousness, though, the bot, which is described in a new paper published in Nature Communications, looks like a marvelous piece of engineering. It can climb over obstacles much taller than itself and carry a payload up to 100 times its weight, according to the release. And automated gadgets that deposit drugs and collect data from inside your body are a growing area of research; some have already won approval from the FDA.
No matter how great it is, that thing is not welcome to climb around my insides.
READ MORE: Tiny soft robot with multilegs paves way for drugs delivery in human body [EurekAlert]
More on tiny robots: Meet The World’s Smallest Robot, It’s the Size of Fly and Capable of Flight
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