Kuru, Kaya ORCID: 0000-0002-4279-4166 (2025) Swarms of Autonomous Microbots & Nanobots in the Human Body. In: 3rd International Summit on Robotics, AI and ML (ISRAI2025), 11-13 September 2025, Dubai, UAE.
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Official URL: https://robotics.spectrumconferences.com/speakers
Abstract
Microbots and nanobots—tiny mechanical systems—can navigate through small spaces inside the human body (e.g., veins) in an automated manner to complete assigned missions such as biosensing, diagnosis, clinical therapy, minimally invasive surgery (e.g. clearing clogged arteries, removing plaques, repairing tissues), and drug delivery (e.g. cancer treatment). Biomedical applications of micro/nanoswarms have immense potential to replace traditional methods and change the game in clinical translation by minimising the need for painful and risky invasive treatments. With the use of these micro/nanorobots, the side effects of drugs or therapy can be minimised where drug delivery (e.g. chemotherapy agents, antibiotics) or therapy (e.g. repair with hyperthermia to destroy cancer cells) is localised in the human body (e.g. tumour sites). The therapy efficiency can be increased with local micro-incision of lesions and the required number of repetitions using integrated outer sensing systems such as ultrasound, tomography/X-ray, MRI or bespoke wearable biomedical devices. Those micro/nanoswarm agents developed for specific tissues, cells, or pathogens, can revolutionise medicine by leveraging cybernetics, materials science, swarm intelligence, and biomedicine.
The main challenges that need to be addressed urgently are i) the establishment of robust communication channels to automate the behaviours of micro/nano robotics swarms, ii) real-time high-quality sensed data transmission and process of it properly for effective decision-making, iii) their external control (e.g. electromagnetic actuation) for realignment, iv) their adaptation to the human body considering the varying characteristics of tissues (e.g. lumen structures), v) real-time state and situation awareness (SSA) (e.g. position through the digital twins (DTs) of human tissues, trajectory/navigational direction, task performance, energy (powered by internal or external energy sources, bio-harvesting) level), vi) real-time morphological control with navigational abilities through the tough and dynamic physiological ecosystem with biofluids (e.g. varying non-linear flow velocity, viscosity, and ion strength), vii) excretion of them from the body safely, and vii) ethical concerns.
Microbots and nanobots need to be understood in various aspects such as their interior mechanisms, modulations, inter/intra communication, behaviours in biofluids, and possible medical applications. This report presents the fundamental features of these tiny mechanical organisms, considering their potential medical applications with micro-scale precision tasks in the dynamic human body.
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