A team of engineers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems has developed a tiny, untethered pangolin-inspired robot for biomedical heat-treating applications within the human body.

Taking inspiration from the pangolin, which is covered in skin featuring hard and rigid scales that move freely and untethered thanks to their overlapping design, the prototype heat-treating robot can “roll” inside the body.

Source: Max Planck Institute

To achieve the overlapping scale design for the millirobot, the engineers laser cut a metal sheet into scaled patterns.

The end result is a roughly 1 cm x 2 cm x 0.2 mm soft, shape-morphing robotic prototype capable of entering difficult-to-reach areas of the human body where it can reportedly perform minimally invasive procedures such as on-demand biomedical heating.

“The robot is actuated with a low-frequency magnetic field to the target location. Application of high-frequency magnetic field results in Joule heating of the metal plates. The heat energy can then be used to interact with the environment,” explained the engineers.

During laboratory tests, the robot could successfully heat up to 70° C and conduct heating treatment on targeted tissues.

In addition to on-demand biomedical heating applications, like devitalization and coagulation, the robots are also being eyed for potential applications including hyperthermia treatment, bleeding control and medication cargo delivery.

The pangolin-inspired robot is detailed in the article, Pangolin-inspired untethered magnetic robot for on-demand biomedical heating applications, which appears in the journal Nature Communications.

For more information on the pangolin-inspired robot, watch the accompanying video that appears courtesy of Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.