Nanorobotics and the Human Body

Nanorobotics and the Human Body
Nanorobots are at the brink of revolutionizing the medical world. Once they are created, scientists believe tiny nanorobots will be the answer to many serious conditions and diseases. Small enough to slip into the blood stream, nanorobots will treat and find disease, and restore lost tissue at the cellular level. Like any developing scientific field, there are objections about side effects and ethical concerns. But the eventual medical advantages are unmistakable.

How Small?
The word, nano is Greek for dwarf. But that can't begin to describe the size of a nano. Each one ranges from 0.1 to 100 nanometers in size. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.

What are they doing now?
Scientists at Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory at Australia’s Monash University have developed tiny nanobot micromotors that are a mere quarter of a millimeter, powered by tiny piezoelectric motors, capable of swimming in the human bloodstream. They are putting the finishing touches on the motors and readying them for clinical tests on animals and, before long, humans. While the team is still devising ways to remote control the new robots, they feel that they have a solid solution for an autonomous motor design in the form of piezoelectricity. Piezoelectricity is the ability of devices to generate electric pulses based on mechanical movement or vibrations. Piezoelectric devices include computer’s clocks, electric guitar pickups, electric stove lighters, and some inkjet printer heads.In the human body, the flow of blood provides abundant kinetic energy. While a nanobot is too small to likely have a useful battery, it could exploit this kinetic energy to power tiny micromotors, the goal of the Australian researchers.