The Tiny Robot that Can Crawl Through Your Veins—And Treat Your Tumors

[Yoni-R]

The next big step in cancer treatment might be small enough to balance on a grain of salt.
Researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have developed a miniature crawling robot, called ViRob (http://t3.technion.ac.il/pdf_files/1220767440.pdf), that can crawl through your lungs, find a tumor, and zap it with drugs. The bot, which is one millimeter long and four millimeters from end to end, can snake its way through the body, slipping into blood vessels and navigating through the respiratory and digestive systems, Innerspace (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093260/) style.
Other mini-robots have been designed to take a voyage into the body (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/01/14/step-one-in-your-surgery-swallow-the-miscroscopic-hands/). But thanks to tiny arms that help it grip vessel walls , ViRob is the first microbot that can tunnel between different body cavities. It’s controlled by an electromagnetic field outside of the robot that creates a vibration that propels ViRob forward.

In lab tests, the robot has traveled up to nine millimeters per second and can commute through body fluids ranging from blood to bile, making it a versatile tool that can race through a vein and burrow into an organ. Its designers even hope to accessorize it with equipment such as a wee camera and a mini pair of tongs, to get that close-up view of those alveoli at work. The researchers are officially introducing the device at the upcoming ILSI-Biomed Conference in Tel Aviv.

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[goat89]

Nanotechnology? :P

[jklv]

Pretty cool, it seems country's with good Defence technology always produce good civil technology as well, Israel being a prime example.
Yeah, you are totally correct. It's hard to make that statement widespread due to the neo-hippie trend.

[coltfan111]

To hell with the neo-hippies..I want to live until Im in my 100's..this technology is never ceasing to amazing me..

[markjh]

But the hippies and EU lefties want Israel cease to exist...

[spider1]

The Jewish brain rules:)

[Holmes85]

To hell with the neo-hippies..I want to live until Im in my 100's..this technology is never ceasing to amazing me..

Just upload my consciousness to the internet before I die, enabling myself to become immortal and I'll truly be happy.:)

They'll have the technology for that sooner or later.

[little icebear]

http://funkhundd.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/innerspace_ver51.jpg


BTW: Why is it in Politics and Rants?

[IraGlacialis]

Cool technology. Another testament to Israeli ingenuity.

Just upload my consciousness to the internet before I die, enabling myself to become immortal and I'll truly be happy.:)

They'll have the technology for that sooner or later.
You once that happens, it won't be the neo-hippies who are obstacles (I don't even know why that is even brought up unless it is just dealing with Isreal).

Every conservative religion is going to angrily descend on that idea like locusts in a cornfield. :)
I can especially see the ****storm happening if it does get developed in Israel due to proximity to Jerusalem.

[Power_serj]

Do you think they will use this to sneek inside their enemies and kill them from the inside?

[3rdMillhouse]

Damn those juice, they invent all the cool stuff. : (

PS: T-1000 anyone?

[Holmes85]

Cool technology. Another testament to Israeli ingenuity.

You once that happens, it won't be the neo-hippies who are obstacles (I don't even know why that is even brought up unless it is just dealing with Isreal).

Every conservative religion is going to angrily descend on that idea like locusts in a cornfield. :)
I can especially see the ****storm happening if it does get developed in Israel due to proximity to Jerusalem.

Actually, the content of this thread does appear more suited for the Off-Topic and Humor Forum. But that's just my reasoning.

[Mastermind]

Okay...militarily, the next step or perhaps the first step on this, was/is to use the re-programmed same teeny-weeny little robots to go in and dismantle the blood vessels at the base of the brain of any enemy soldiers the things get near after being sprayed over them by invisible robot glider balloons in the night...the soldiers/insurgents inhale them by the thousands as they sleep, and then come morning, a little surprise. No one shows up for lamb kabob breakfast.

But, gee...disguised as cancer cures, these things are praised!

[3rdMillhouse]

Okay...militarily, the next step or perhaps the first step on this, was/is to use the re-programmed same teeny-weeny little robots to go in and dismantle the blood vessels at the base of the brain of any enemy soldiers the things get near after being sprayed over them by invisible robot glider balloons in the night...the soldiers/insurgents inhale them by the thousands as they sleep, and then come morning, a little surprise. No one shows up for lamb kabob breakfast.

But, gee...disguised as cancer cures, these things are praised!

Let's abstract this concept of nanomachines just a bit and forget the idea of a tiny robot. Let's think in terms of tiny processors, the size of grain of salt, in your bloodstream, that banded togheter can form a internal health monitoring system as well an antena array that could provide a single person with satelite communication possibilities. Heck, let's go further and sugest it'd be possible to intercept the electrical impulse in the optical nerve and convert those impulses into image, and then transmit such imagery back to the FOB. Military aplications of nanotechnology are gonna change the face of war as we know it.

[hsh2]

Interesting.

The Japanese had designed a similar apparatus maybe 7or 8 yrs ago. It was made by a company called "Norika" and used some kind of a battery which charged itself via the electric shock emitted by a human heartbeat or so.

http://www.gizmag.com/go/3174/gallery/