Future Timeline

About two years ago, Scientists from the University of Vermont (UVM) introduced the so-called xenobots. At that time, they still had to be assembled by hand from frog cells according to the blueprints of an AI.

The team has now taken a huge step forward by allowing the tiny robots to reproduce themselves, as explained in the research journal PNAS (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2112672118). This represents a groundbreaking breakthrough that will allow robots to be used in humans in the future.

They initially consisted of around 500 to 1000 skin and heart muscle cells from frogs. A computer algorithm, which was supposed to build machines for very specific tasks, had previously delivered the blueprint for the bots. This resulted in mini-robots that crawled independently on four little legs through a Petri dish. Some of the less than a millimeter small specimens were even able to transport tiny objects. The mini-robots use the reserves of the cells as fuel, which can supply energy for several days.

They also mention that there is no need to worry about self-replicating biomachines. The small robots are biodegradable and safely stored in the laboratory.

(IFL Science) Regenerative medicine might just have had a new tool added to its arsenal: Scientists have created tiny biological robots out of living human cells. Though they may be small, the self-assembling bots are mighty, with a study demonstrating their potential for healing and treating disease.
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The starting point for the newest robots, called anthrobots, is a single adult human cell taken from the trachea (windpipe). These types of cells are covered in tiny hair-like structures called cilia which help keep tiny particles out of our lungs. By manipulating their growth conditions in the lab, the team was able to encourage the cells to replicate into multicellular organoids with the cilia facing outwards.

Now, with their coating of oar-like cilia beating away, the cells would be able to move.
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The scientists were surprised at their capabilities, which open up a whole host of potential applications in neurological diseases, tissue damage, and drug delivery. The fact that the cells naturally grow into such a range of structures, and that you could theoretically harvest a patient’s own cells for the process, thus limiting the chances of adverse immune reactions, means that we’re probably only scratching the surface of the possibilities.
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“It is fascinating and completely unexpected that normal patient tracheal cells, without modifying their DNA, can move on their own and encourage neuron growth across a region of damage. We’re now looking at how the healing mechanism works, and asking what else these constructs can do.”

Researchers at Tuft University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology have collaborated to create microscopic biological robots that could help heal the body after a trauma. Though the so-called anthrobots haven’t been tested in humans yet, they’ve shown promise in petri dish injury models that use human cells.

Each anthrobot consists of a few lung cells cultured from single isolated cells over two weeks. These cells form tiny clumps. (By tiny, we mean tiny—each anthrobot is smaller than the point of a sharpened pencil.) Lung cells possess cilia, the minute, hairlike structures that help some cells build traction and locomote. While the cells’ cilia normally face toward the center of a clump, saturating the clumps in a low-adhesive solution for an additional week allowed the researchers to force the cilia to point outward. This gave each anthrobot the same locomotive property possessed by individual lung cells, with the bonus of moving as a group.

https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/p ... al-trials/
Endiatx has begun clinical trials of its ingestible PillBot™, which will enable doctors to remotely examine the gastrointestinal tract of a patient over a zoom call.

Endiatx's technologies promise much more though, with the company planning to add tools to remove polyps, cauterize bleeds, sample the microbiome, and collect biopsy samples. The company's product development roadmap proposes a suite of robotic surgeons of ever-decreasing size and broadening applications for use within the human body.

The obvious benefits of this technology are immediate diagnosis anywhere on the planet with minimum invasiveness, but the company believes that one day in the not-too-distant future, an army of rice-grain-sized surgeons may operate on you while you go about your normal daily routine.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a pill that releases microscopic robots, or microrobots, into the colon to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The experimental treatment, given orally, has shown success in mice. It significantly reduced IBD symptoms and promoted the healing of damaged colon tissue without causing toxic side effects.

The study was published June 26 in Science Robotics.

IBD, an autoimmune disorder characterized by chronic inflammation of the gut, affects millions of people worldwide, causing severe abdominal pain, rectal bleeding, diarrhea and weight loss.

If you're ever faced with trying to pick up a grain of rice with a pair of chopsticks, spare a thought for the scientists behind this latest innovation, which has been called "a medical breakthrough on the verge of happening." They've painstakingly built a soft robot with the capacity to carry different types of drugs through the body. It's the size of a grain of rice, and can be driven to various internal targets via magnetic fields.

Researchers in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), have built on earlier work to create a grain-sized soft robot that can enter the body and be controlled by magnetic fields to travel to a specific target. Once there, it can quickly or slowly release the medication it has stored in its tiny frame.