Dr. Octopus to the rescue! Coming soon from Penn State University science department....The amazing Micro-Spider Bots: Why are they amazing you might ask? Inventor Ayusman Sen hopes to attach the spider bots to other nanobots to perform tasks within the human body. Which could be used to detect tumors, bolster the immune system and clear vessels clean of plaque.
The Micro-Spider bots are made of two spheres, one gold, the other silica, and measure less than a micrometer wide. For comparison, the average blood cell is 6 to 10 micrometers wide.
The spider bots are self-propelled by a molecule called the Grubbs catalyst, a molecule that makes chains of smaller molecules, like a spider spinning its web. When placed in a container of the chemical norborene, the catalyst "spins a polymer" of molecules from the chemical. With more unpolymerised molecules on the gold side, the solvent moves into that region creating a flow. This, in turn, creates movement of the spider itself. Movement is controllable.
The team put down a trail norborene in a solvent, and the spider bots followed the path. This could lead to guiding the bots to a site of infection. This concept is nothing really new; however, it is the advancement in the field of nano-medical robotics. I hope they come up with a better name the spider bots because people might be a little uncomfortable getting injected with spiders.
The next step is to create a series of Spider-bots that can be powered off glucose or other chemical available readily in the body.
Eavesdropper
