Priorities

This Bacteria-Powered Microrobot Navigates via Electric Fields

This Bacteria-Powered Microrobot Navigates via Electric Fields

by The Daily Eye Team February 9 2016, 3:33 pm Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 36 secs

Engineers from Drexel University have devised a bacteria-powered microrobot that can be steered through fluids with applied electric fields. Imagine a tiny, tiny robotic system covered over by even tinier biomolecular arms (flagella) working cooperatively as a "bacterial surface" to move the biobot from place to place, and then, just as importantly, imagine an algorithm that can steer the thing. The group's work is described in the current IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

The bacteria-powered microrobot (BPM) idea is in itself not new. Researchers are chasing after the technology from many different angles, while biomedical engineers from the same Drexel lab had demonstrated an earlier version of this same concept in 2014, albeit in a much simpler environment.

Read More at www.motherboard.vice.com




Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of thedailyeye.info. The writers are solely responsible for any claims arising out of the contents of this article.