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Could Microscopic Robots Run Through Your Veins?
Four-legged robots, the width of a hair in size, can be powered by shooting lasers shooting into onboard solar cells.
Fantastic Voyage is a science fiction film from 1966. The movie involves a submarine crew. The characters have shrunk down to microscopic size and travel into the body of an injured scientist. Spoiler alert: The group ultimately repairs his brain by destroying a blood clot.
On a musical note, hip hop fans likely know Coolio’s song “Fantastic Voyage.” It has this catchy chorus:
“Slide, slide, slippity slide
With switches on the block in a ‘65
Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide, slide, who ride?”
He released the song in 1994, on the album “It Takes a Thief.”
Let’s re-enter the real world, one in which robots that are so small that we cannot see them with the naked eye. Microscopic robots or microbots are have arrived. What if we could inject them (through hypodermic needles) to travel through our veins and explore our bodies? The robots recently described in the journal Nature are about the width of a human hair — and have four legs powered by onboard solar cells.
