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Who Needs Asimov's 'Proteus' When You Can Have Pangolins?
Science fiction fans have longed for a personal Proteus, the miniaturized ship from the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage. Inside the body, it could guard against any number of internal enemies.
(Proteus from Fantastic Voyage)
Given that the Proteus is pure fiction, though, maybe you'd settle for a pangolin?
Researchers in Germany have developed a small robot that can deliver drugs to specific locations in a patient’s (in this case) digestive tract and then be unfolded via externally applied magnetic fields.The clinical uses for miniature, untethered magnetic robots are still limited because the devices mainly rely just on mechanical interactions with the body, instead of also using, say, heat. Magnetic fields can also remotely supply energy to robots for heating. However, magnetic fields are best at heating rigid metallic parts, and such components generally take away the advantage of having a soft body.
Now scientists have developed a tiny magnetic robot that combines hard and soft by drawing inspiration from the pangolin. The animal, which resembles a walking pine cone, is the only mammal completely covered in hard scales. However, the pangolin is still capable of flexible motion—it can arrange its scales so that they overlap, letting it curl up into a ball in case of danger.
(Via IEEE Spectrum.)
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