Starfish are awesome sea creatures with regenerative arms and eye spots at the end of each arm that can sense light and dark. In the robot world, their quirky design has inspired tiny starfish-shaped medical microbots that can perform colon biopsies.The microgrippers, developed by materials science and engineering professor David Gracias at John Hopkins University, can be smaller than 500 micrometers from one tip to the other—smaller than a thumb tack. The tiny arms are made with rigid magnetic nickel, and IEEE Spectrum reports that the devices "can be made of materials that respond to envionmental factors such as temperature, pH, and even enzymes.Once placed into the body, the starfish bot's heat-sensitive arms will react to the body's temperature, and flex their arms accordingly. In IEEE Spectrum's video, the microbot opens its tiny arms out like a flying squirrel before clamping down firmly on a wobbly chunk of material. The researchers have tested out this method to obtain biopsies from pig colons and esophaguses.It's believed that these bots could give doctors a less invasive way to screen for colon cancer. When performing a biopsy, doctors will typically collect tissue with a needle attached to a syringe, or make a small cut to access the area surgically.
The idea with the microgrippers is that the doctor would dispatch a swarm of either hundreds or thousands of the starfish troopers into the colon via tube. The doctor would then retrieve them using a magnet, or the patient could naturally discharge them through their poop.While it's still early days, the starfish trooper bot adds to a growing collection of medical minibots (Motherboard recently covered a self-destructing origami mini-bot that could be deployed in the body), which hold promises of taking out some of our future ailments.
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