It is common to find robots made of silicone and other soft materials, but researchers from the University of Hong Kong have gone further.
They have teamed up with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to create robots that are made primarily of liquids, robots they call aquabots.
They present them in an article published in ACS Nano, where they claim that, mainly due to the fact that they are made with liquids, they could have very valuable biomedical and environmental applications.
They have worked on the water-oil and water-water interface, using nanoparticles and polyelectrolytes to assemble materials. Shapes are defined using external forces, but can also use full liquid 3D printing to organize assemblies in the available space.
The goal is to create artificial constructions that mimic biological systems, all thanks to magnetic nanoparticles that move under the force of external magnetic fields. In this way, using magnetsit is possible to define the shape of liquid robotic systems with nanoparticles inside.
The result is robots that can be programmed to perform specific tasks using water-soluble compounds. They could even be used inside the body, as they are biocompatible, with water inside and out.
At the moment the structures created are very simple, but they believe that they are close to creating more complex robots that can assemble themselves to do a task, disassemble and wait for new instructions to adopt a different form for another task.
The utility is diverse, from aquabots inside the body to administer drugs in specific places, to the design of human tissues or imitation of specific biological systems.
At the moment they are trying to incorporate a hydrogel into the robot assembly, analyze the combination with other microfluidics and look for new applications for their invention.
Study available in
