Disturbing Robotic Slime Can Move Around Inside the Body, Pick Up Objects
Scientists working at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have created something that looks horrifying, and only gets more upsetting when you learn it’s designed to crawl around inside your body. The appropriately named “magnetic slime robot” doesn’t need any internal electronics — it’s a combination of several different materials, allowing it to be controlled with external magnetic fields. The result is a wriggling, brown blob that could one day scoop harmful objects out of the human digestive tract. That should pair nicely with your nanoparticle toothbrush.
The slime bot has a structural matrix composed of polyvinyl alcohol and borax, which is a common constituent of cleaning products. This mixture is doped with magnetized neodymium particles. That makes the ooze sufficiently magnetic that it can be influenced by other magnets placed outside the body. The researchers, led by Professor Li Zhang, have done laboratory testing that shows how the slime bot could navigate a human stomach and retrieve a potentially dangerous object.
Since there are no internal electronics, the slime robot can’t operate alone. Doctors would have to use imaging to locate an object and guide the slime to the right location. When it gets there, the team has shown that it can successfully envelop small objects like a coin cell battery. It forms C and O shapes quite easily to ensnare the target. Then, you can simply drag the foreign material out with a magnet.
According to the researchers, the magnetic slime robot has a consistency like custard, a famously non-Newtonian fluid. That means the ooze behaves differently depending on how much force it encounters. When moving slowly, it flows like a liquid. When struck, dropped, or moving quickly, it behaves more like a solid. It can even merge back together if part of the blob gets separated.
Neodymium magnets are not a new technology, so why has nobody made a disturbing slime robot before? These particles are potentially toxic to humans, so your first instinct would not be to send them in after another hazardous object. However, the team compensated for this by coating the slime bot with a layer of silica to contain the magnetic particles. Zhang believes it would be safe to send the robot into the body for short periods of time — this is a future topic of study. The team also showed that the slime bot could have other applications. It’s conductive, so it could also slither into tight spaces to reconnect severed wires.
Continue reading
Intel’s Sapphire Rapids Slips a Bit, but Ramp Still Planned for Q2 2022
Intel's Sapphire Rapids is expected to ship for volume in Q2 2022. It's not a delay, exactly, but it's a bit of an adjustment.
Steam Deck Ship Dates Slip Into Q3 2022 as Pundits Debate Its Appeal
Even as folks debate the potential success of the Steam Deck, the handheld is selling — or at least, racking up reservations — like hotcakes.
NASA: Asteroid Bennu Has Slightly Higher Chance of Impacting Earth
The bad news is it's more likely to smack into Earth than we initially believed. The good news; it's still much more likely to miss us.
This Week in Space: The Moon is a Slightly Less Harsh Mistress
Hello, lovelies, and welcome to your favorite space news breakdown. This week, it's mostly planets and geopolitics, with relatively little launch news. Shall we?