WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.300 --> 00:00:04.107
Scientists aren't just interested in making robots which look like us.

2
00:00:04.390 --> 00:00:07.276
They wanna... want them to get right under our skin, too.

3
00:00:07.521 --> 00:00:15.352
Bring on the nanobots -- miniature medics and pharmacists able to get right to where they're needed, even inside our own bodies.

4
00:00:15.381 --> 00:00:21.816
In this week's Make, Create, Innovate, Nick Glass discovers that while these little guys may be small, they are extremely powerful.

5
00:00:36.406 --> 00:00:41.214
When we think of robots, we think of factory floors and science fiction movies.

6
00:00:41.690 --> 00:00:48.530
Or, as we've shown you on past episodes of Make, Create, Innovate, the Roomba vacuum cleaner, or Bob the security guard.

7
00:00:50.184 --> 00:00:56.138
In these underground research labs in Zurich in Switzerland, the approach has been radically different --

8
00:00:56.509 --> 00:01:05.644
robots so small, so miniature, they're barely visible to the eye and able to go places almost beyond our imagination.

9
00:01:09.090 --> 00:01:14.362
We're making micro- and nanorobots that are guided by externally generated magnetic fields for use in the human body.

10
00:01:15.657 --> 00:01:20.832
Brad Nelson is a mechanical engineer that likes to think small -- very small.

11
00:01:21.290 --> 00:01:27.194
He's a pioneer in a field that's only existed for the last decade or so -- nanorobotics.

12
00:01:29.857 --> 00:01:35.152
[To] give you an idea of how small these are -- if I had a teaspoon, I could fit about 3 billion of them in a teaspoon. So, ...

13
00:01:35.168 --> 00:01:38.110
Three billion? It's kind of unimaginable.

14
00:01:38.131 --> 00:01:40.168
It is kind of unimaginable, yeah.

15
00:01:40.420 --> 00:01:42.530
Well, the first challenges were how to make these things move.

16
00:01:43.147 --> 00:01:52.502
The inspiration comes from nature, the E. coli bacterium in particular, which is propelled along by a rotating tail, or so-called flagellum.

17
00:01:52.633 --> 00:01:55.167
Now, we can't make that motor. We don't have the technology for that.

18
00:01:55.529 --> 00:02:01.396
But, what we brought in were some lessons we'd learned about magnetic fields and using magnetism to move these things.

19
00:02:01.329 --> 00:02:05.967
So, we actually take these flagella and we magnetize them,

20
00:02:06.323 --> 00:02:11.874
and then we have a special rotating field -- a special type of magnetic field we generate -- which allows them to swim.

21
00:02:12.305 --> 00:02:17.766
Having cracked propulsion, Nelson and his team worked on refining how the nanobots moved,

22
00:02:18.185 --> 00:02:23.062
how they danced -- a waltz, orchestrated on a nano scale.

23
00:02:25.838 --> 00:02:31.623
The nanobots are all manufactured in ultra-clean rooms like this, specially lit for the purpose.

24
00:02:32.084 --> 00:02:35.737
Machines to maneuver them about are also being designed and built.

25
00:02:36.136 --> 00:02:37.998
The target market is health care.

26
00:02:38.271 --> 00:02:46.447
What you see on the screen here is an image through our ophthalmic microscope of an artificial eye, and in the middle of that is what we call a microrobot.

27
00:02:46.483 --> 00:02:51.629
It's about a third of a millimeter in diameter, about a millimeter or so long. So, very, very tiny.

28
00:02:51.888 --> 00:02:54.267
So, this particular device [is] made to carry drugs.

29
00:02:54.281 --> 00:03:01.670
And so, we can move it to any location on the retina, and then as it sits there, cause it to diffuse drugs off of it to [a] very particular location.

30
00:03:02.416 --> 00:03:05.527
As well as our eyes, Nelson is targeting our hearts.

31
00:03:05.918 --> 00:03:10.695
An operation to repair damaged heart tissue is already planned for later this year.

32
00:03:11.319 --> 00:03:16.403
And from one vital organ to another, he hopes his machines could be used in the brain.

33
00:03:16.628 --> 00:03:27.505
So, we've looked at applications, for instance, in deep brain stimulation and implanting electrodes in the brain, and we've looked at putting catheters within the vasculature of the brain.

34
00:03:29.216 --> 00:03:32.422
And this could just be the beginning for Nelson's nanobots.

35
00:03:32.907 --> 00:03:40.480
He believes they could help us environmentally, something microscopic to tackle. something massive, like an oil spill.

36
00:03:41.426 --> 00:03:42.313
These are very small.

37
00:03:42.350 --> 00:03:47.543
If we can create swarms of them that can go out, they can cover a broad area.

38
00:03:47.700 --> 00:03:53.940
Water treatment, environmental cleanup, where you might be able to put hundreds, thousands, millions of these devices

39
00:03:54.316 --> 00:04:00.021
and have them swim through polluted water, catalyze pollutants, and then collect them [back] later back.

40
00:04:00.101 --> 00:04:04.590
That's a particular application that's exciting and that we're certainly focusing on here.