A pangolin-inspired small robot designed to perform safe and minimally invasive medical procedures inside of the body was revealed in a study published this week.

The untethered, soft robots may one day be capable of accessing hard-to-reach regions inside of the body—such as in the stomach and small intestine—by morphing their shape.

When most of us think of the word "robot" we think of something made of hard metal and wires, something at the cutting edge of technology and engineering, but that's not entirely accurate.

One of the most exciting advances in the field of robotics comes from so-called "soft robotics" which refers to animated pieces of material that can perform tasks but which aren't necessarily filled with wiring and circuitry, like this "gelbot" that can inch along from the manipulation of heat.

Untethered miniature robots working inside a human body can harvest energy made available to them remotely, such as light, magnetic, or acoustic energy, and convert them to other forms of energy in order to perform tasks.

Despite having keratin scales, pangolins can move with a flexible and unencumbered motion by organizing their rigid scales into an overlapping structure.

Inspired by pangolins, Metin Sitti and colleagues at the Max Planck Insitute in Munich, designed a millirobot, 1 cm by 2 cm by 0.2 mm in size, with an overlapping scale design and on-demand heating, shape-morphing, and rolling capabilities.

In proof-of-concept experiments in the laboratory, the robots were able to heat to 70°C and perform medical treatments on tissues with potential future clinical applications, including hyperthermia to treat cancer or stop bleeding in hard-to-reach regions. Additionally, the robots are capable of demagnetizing to release cargo onto the tissues, which could be used to deliver drugs in the future.

All this they can do via their ability to roll and tumble about, triggered by external magnetic stimulation that charges particles in the millirobot's pangolin-like scales, allowing it to change from a flat to a curled posture, and thus locomote.

Although further testing is required, this technology could be a useful clinical tool for the delivery of therapeutic payloads and heat therapy applications.

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