A little robot runs through your veins

The smallest robot in the world may have been crawling through your veins for a while.

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a tiny remote-controlled robot that moves like a crab in response to heat. The robot is less than a millimeter wide, making it small enough to pass through a vein.

Ultimately, these types of robots could detect and resolve blockages in arteries, or even fight tumors with our bodies, but we’re a long way from that. For example, the material that makes up the robot is not yet suitable for use in the body and it now works smoothly, whereas in the body it probably has to move mostly through liquid.

And even though it is the smallest robot in the world – at the moment – it is still ten times larger than some vessels in our body. So if it’s going to be able to go anywhere, it needs to be even smaller. The current design, however, is not unusable. For example, this robot could already help fix devices in places we humans could never go.

Read more: The world’s smallest remote-controlled nursing robot could one day crawl through your arteries†