Researchers have developed medical nanorobots that can swim through the eyeball’s dense tissue. The propeller-shaped bots are designed to deliver medicine to precise locations in the eye. Developed at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, the Planck bots are the first to be designed specifically for the human eyeball. At about 500 nanometres wide, the eyebots are around 200 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.
To keep the bots from getting entangled in the eyeball’s mesh of biological molecules, the Planck team applied a liquid layer found in the carnivorous pitcher plant, which has a slippery surface to catch insects. For movement, the eyebots’ propeller-shaped elements are seeded with tiny metal particles which respond to an external magnetic field, controlled by the doctor, which ultimately guides the robot to the desired location in the eye.
The idea is to deploy a eyebot ‘swarm to deliver treatments within the eye without the need for surgery or other invasive techniques.
Picture Credit : Google
