Living Micro-Robot Could Diagnose Disease

Living Micro-Robot Could Diagnose Disease

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Biologists and engineers are working on a tiny robot that functions like a living creature and could be safely used within the human body to diagnose disease. Called ‘Cyberplasm’, it’s based loosely on the sea lamprey, and will have an electronic nervous system, ‘eye’ and ‘nose’ sensors derived from mammalian cells, and artificial muscles that use glucose as an energy source. It will be less than a centimeter long, with future versions potentially under a millimeter.

Cyberplasm could also represent the first step on the road to important advances in, for example, advanced prosthetics where living muscle tissue might be engineered to contract and relax in response to stimulation from light waves or electronic signals