When you think about surgery, you probably picture a doctor wielding scalpels and forceps, or perhaps a surgeon controlling a large robotic arm to perform a minimally invasive procedure. But according to Renee Zhao, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford, the future of surgery is going to be far more miniaturized – and swimming.

On a recent episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast, Zhao described the tiny, tether-free robots she and her team are developing to navigate through the body’s blood vessels and perform endovascular procedures. Inspired by the flexible, soft structures found in nature like octopus arms, these “millirobots” are just a few millimeters in size but can swim at rapid speeds and even deliver drugs.

The robot itself is highly multifunctional. First of all, we talk about the swimming capability. If it can swim, that’s great, but it’s like a toy, right? Swims in a blood vessel. Yeah, of course, it will be a lot of fun, but we need it to be able to treat diseases.

And treat diseases it can. Zhao described how the hollow structure of the robot allows it to carry and dispense drugs at specific sites in the body. Even more impressively, the physical interaction between the robot’s spinning motion and blood clots can break down and treat the clots – no drugs required.

But manufacturing robots at such a small scale comes with significant challenges, particularly around power and control. Zhao’s solution is to separate the power source from the robot itself. “The key point here is to have a type of stimulation that can separate the control unit and the power source from the robotic system itself,” she said. Her millirobots are controlled and powered by magnetic fields, eliminating the need for bulky onboard batteries or tethers.

Looking ahead, Zhao sees artificial intelligence playing a crucial role in optimizing the design of medical robots. With so many parameters to consider – size, shape, materials, and more – the design space is simply too large for trial-and-error experimentation. She envisions a future where AI can create customized robot designs based on a specific patient’s anatomy, as mapped by X-ray or CT imaging.

“I think that will be super exciting, which will revolutionize the future of healthcare,” Zhao said.

While the world of nanorobotics – robots at the nanometer scale – is an exciting area of research, Zhao believes there are still plenty of opportunities to explore at the millimeter scale. It’s a scale that strikes a balance between being small enough to navigate the body’s vasculature and large enough to incorporate complex functionality and be reliably manufactured.

As robotic surgery continues to advance, it’s clear that the next frontier is not just about making robots smaller, but smarter and more autonomous. With researchers like Zhao pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, we may soon find ourselves in a world where tiny, swimming robots are performing life-saving surgeries – no human surgeon required.

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