3D printed Tiny robots

Posted on May 30, 2019 Updated on May 28, 2019

Tiny robots activated by magnetic fields may be used in future biomedical procedures.
According to Professor Eric Diller (MIE), researchers at the U of T,” they create magnetized microrobots. The size of the head of a pin that can travel through fluid-filled vessels and organs within the human body. Previously, we would prepare one shape and manually design it, spend weeks planning it, before we could fabricate it. And that’s just one shape. Then when we build it, we would inevitably discover specific quirks — for example, we might have to tweak it to be a little bigger or thinner to make it work. If we were taking samples in the urinary tract or within fluid cavities of the brain — we envision that an optimized technique would be instrumental in scaling down surgical robotic tools”.
According to Tianqi Xu, he is MIE MASc candidate, “These robots are quite difficult and labor-intensive to fabricate because the process requires precision. Also because of the need for manual assembly, it’s more difficult to make these robots smaller, which is a major goal of our research”.

No assembly required: U of T Engineering researchers automate microrobotic designs