Nanobots are a quickly developing technology. While they don't have the functionality of certain SciFi portrayals (such as Big Hero Six's Microbots), scientists are slowly experimenting and testing the bots to see how they could use them in the future.
The latest development, Smithsonian Magazine reports, is that a team of researchers from the University of California have successfully inserted a series of nanobots into a live mouse's bloodstream. The nanobots are designed to transport and disperse a series of drugs into the bloodstream that will help the mouse.
Nanobots like this have been developed and tested in collections of cells before, but only on collections of cell cultures.
The nanobots were self-propelled capsules, according to io9.
"To [move the drugs], the researchers constructed polymer tubes coated with zinc," the site reported. "The miniscule machines were a mere 20 micrometers long, which is about the width of a strand of human hair. Once implanted in the gut of a live mouse, the zinc reacted to the acid in the stomach by producing bubbles of hydrogen, which propelled the nanobots into the stomach lining. Once attached, they began to dissolve, by that delivering their nanoparticle contents within the stomach tissue."
According to the study, the first test was a complete success and delivered the drugs to where they were needed. This nanobot's function is very simple, but a very important step towards creating bots that that do more than deliver drugs. Doctors hope to invent nanobots that can help detect diseases, repair damaged cells and possibly remove the risk of death by old age.
The idea of using small robots for surgery was inspired by a 1959 Richard Feynman lecture titled "There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom," according to the BBC. That idea eventually inspired science fiction stories like "Fantastic Voyage" and "Innerspace."
