How This Little Robot Could Help Crohn’s
The Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems aims to understand perception, action, and learning in intelligent systems. It is continuously evolving in researching pioneer breakthroughs and finding much-needed answers to scientific questions. The Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems is located in two cities: Stuttgart and Tübingen. At the Stuttgart site, researchers concentrate working on small-scale robotics, bio-inspired systems, medical robotics, haptic perception, self-organization, and physical intelligence. At the Tübingen site, researchers focus their energies on robotics, computer vision, control, machine learning, and the theory of intelligence.
Most recently, the researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have created a miniature robot, known as the millirobot, that can walk, crawl, roll jump, and swim throughout the body. The research, published in the journal Nature, found that the robot may be swallowed, injected or inserted under the skin and can then navigate throughout complex environments within the body and potentially target drug delivery or minimally invasive surgery.
A robot inside the body
The research team wanted to create a robot that could move around in the body and whose movement would be based similarly to that of caterpillars and jellyfish. However, the main obstacle was trying to create this tiny structure. Fortunately, with the help of elastomer rubber, which includes miniature magnetic particles, this was made possible. By applying a magnetic field, the particles can be maneuvered from the outside of the body, thus allowing the robot – about four millimeters in length - to move around on the inside as desired. “We looked at the physical mechanism of locomotion of soft-bodied caterpillars and jellyfishes and took inspiration from them. The result is that our millirobot is a mix of small-scale soft-bodied animals, such as a beetle larva, a caterpillar, a spermatozoid, and a jellyfish,” said Professor Metin Sitti, Director of the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart and a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
A wide range of movement
While other small-scale robots have limited range of movement, this miniature robot can easily move around on surfaces or inside liquids much like a caterpillar, regardless of not having legs. “The robot first can move on solid surfaces. And also our robot can walk as the first modality, and then it can roll to be really fast when needed. And when it sees an obstacle, the easiest and most efficient way is jumping over it, which our robot can do — like some caterpillars can also do. And then it can reach the watery or liquid surfaces by diving onto the surface. It can swim on the water's surface, it can dive inside and it can swim underwater like a jellyfish,” said professor Sitti. Up until now, the robot has been tested out on obstacle courses in a laboratory and the next objective is to test it out in targeting drug delivery within the human body. “After the robot is deployed inside the body, it can be navigated using seven different locomotion methods to reach to the target disease area. Then, the robot can deliver drug locally in a controlled dose by using its shape-change control. This can remove possible side effects that some drugs could have and can also improve the drug delivery efficiency and amount control,” said professor Sitti.
How this robot could help Crohn’s disease
Currently, the researchers are focusing on getting the robot to work within the digestive and urinary systems, in an attempt to potentially target medical conditions such as Crohn’s disease and urinary tract infections. Once they have met this objective, they will move onto developing the robot to target and treat cardiovascular diseases - the leading cause of high mortality worldwide, accounting for more than 17 million deaths a year. “In the case of digestive or urinary systems, where the current robot could get in with its current size, the robot would be swallowed. For internal organ applications, we would deploy the robot through a small incision, like in the case of laparoscopy. In vascular system applications, we could inject it onto the blood vessels” said professor Sitti.
The future potential
The current version of the robot is not completely degradable; however, the researchers believe that this can be fixed rather quickly. “We have elastomers fully degradable in the body. We have magnetic nanoparticles fully degradable in the body. It’s just a matter of integrating them,” said professor Sitti. Thus far, the researchers have been able to successfully navigate the caterpillar miniature robot through environments via ultrasound imaging. “So far, we've tested on a synthetic stomach model, which is very similar softness and texture and also mucus layer on the surface that is used for surgical training. And our robot can easily move on the mucus surface and also in liquid areas, because in the stomach we also have fluids. And [the robot] also can jump over the complex stomach tissue when needed,” said professor Sitti. “In the future, our robot can carry drugs and deliver them to a desired location where they are most needed, much like a doorstep delivery. We would use it for minimally invasive medical applications inside the human body: it would be delivered through swallowing or a cavity on the skin and make its way through the digestive or urinary tract, abdominal cavity, or heart surface,” he added.
Professor Sitti and his fellow team of researchers, including Guo Zhan Lum, Wenqi Hu, and Massimo Mastrangeli, have further plans for the robot, including potential treatment target therapy for cancer. “As another medical use very soon, we could heat the robot in the target location remotely — using electromagnetic waves — and the heated robot could stop bleeding in a wound or kill cancer cells locally,” said professor Sitti. Moreover, they hope that one day in the near future, this robot will become a standard treatment option in healthcare for targeted drug delivery and invasive surgery. “Currently it is not possible to access many small regions inside the human body without surgery, but our target is to reach such regions non-invasively and conduct diagnostic and therapeutic operations with our soft robots,” said professor Sitti. The robot’s pilot trial also drew the attention of Leif Ristroph, a mathematician from New York University’s Courant Institute. “The pilot, who we don’t see, is also quite impressive… Clearly whoever is controlling the magnetic fields has gained some hard-earned intuition and fine skills” he said.
Professor Sitti and his team are focused on creating several smart-like robots for medical applications and these robots range in size – from a few millimeters to a few hundred microns. They emphasize the potential of the caterpillar miniature robot and the future of robotics on creating treatment options for several medical conditions, including Crohn’s disease. Their work proves to be complex, but it is also proof that with thorough research and dedication, an innovative and safe approach to drug delivery within the body can be developed. “We have some … more development needed in animal models first which we will do in the next two to three years. And we'd like to have the first human testing in four to five years. I can say that within 10 years we could see this kind of technology in real clinical use,” concluded professor Sitti.
References
https://labiotech.eu/drug-delivery-robot-germany/
