HONOLULU (KHON2) -- Engineers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa announced they have made a significant medical breakthrough for surgeries in an inaccessible part of your body.
UH officials announced the development of "tiny squishy robots" that can work together through the "body's complex network of tubes and vessels."
The robots would help with minimally invasive procedures as they can "deliver medicine to multiple locations, perform several tasks simultaneously during medical procedures and conduct procedures remotely.
Officials said the robots would especially help those who have to travel long distances for specialized medical procedures.
We can maybe also leverage the medical resources in the mainland, right? So thinking about a doctor that can operate some machine, and all of the signals could be transmitted to Hawaiʻi in real-time, and they can operate these teeny, tiny small-scale robots for the proper medical treatment.
Tianlu Wang, UH Mānoa College of Engineering Assistant Professor
Each bot interacts differently with surrounding tissue and is individually controlled through magnetic fields by a single external magnet.
In addition, they can adapt to the body's natural pathways.
Officials added the research was a collaboration between UH Mānoa, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany, ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Koç University in Turkey