At the ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference) that ended in San Francisco, a group of researchers demonstrated a floating micro-robot designed to move through the bloodstream in the human body. Scientists at Stanford University say that the microrobot is designed to work right inside the heart, lungs and other organs, on which operations are undesirable or very difficult
"Fully autonomous implantable locomotion system", as described in a scientific article by scientists, is a tiny chip that can literally float in blood (or any other liquid). Experts say that the robot moves with the help of commands from a remote operator.
The authors of the development say that their robot is about 2 mm2 in size and is equipped with several small antennas that pick up the signal. Taking into account the fact that the antennas of the robot are very small, they should work with a submillimeter range in a very high frequency range. Previously, it was believed that the skin and muscle tissue absorb gigahertz submillimeter radio emission, but Stanford scientists managed to find the optimal combination that passes through the body.
The created robot is capable of moving at a speed of 0.53 cm / sec. The carrier frequency for its operation is 1.86 GHz, while the robot itself was created using a 65-nanometer technological process and is based on an ordinary CMOS microcircuit. The complete robot structure consists of a radio control interface, a controller, a demodulator, a digital control system and a set for moving the device.
The current version of the robot is purely an experimental system, while in the future the Stanford researchers intend to create a robot model capable of attacking blood clots in blood vessels or delivering drugs directly to the target organ.