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" Inner space: It&amp;#039;s the magical, microscopic land that exists inside all of us\u2014the place where red blood cells frolic with white, where our organs chug along like meaty factories, and where a squirming mass of micro-robots are set to infiltrate in the near future. For the record, Innerspace is also a brilliant movie from the 1980s starring Dennis Quaid and Martin Short. But enough about Dennis Quaid. A new class of tiny robots faces new and perilous dangers as they traipse around the human body\u2014swimming in veins, wriggling through guts, sliding down the back of your nasal cavity\u2014to fend off disease, perform surgery and explore the not-so-vast unknowns of... you. \u2014Daniel H. Wilson, Resident Roboticist Slime Walkers As if robots didn&amp;#039;t already have enough trouble keeping their balance, they lose any shot at conventional locomotion techniques on the sensitive micro-terrain of, say, your lower intestine. So rather than walking, climbing and swimming, Roboticists have looked towards the squirmy, mimicking a biological world that teems with bugs and parasites. Robots such as the Dutch &amp;quot;wormbots&amp;quot; from Delft University of Technology squeeze through the human digestive system by switching between undulatory motion to wiggle like a snake (good for when things get watery) and peristaltic locomotion to shrink and elongate like an earthworm (watch a &amp;quot;wormbot&amp;quot; in action). Tail Swimmers The small intestine is s tight squeeze for a tiny wormbot, but to travel to your kidneys a robot must be microscopic. Micro-robots are millimeter-sized machines that mimic the propulsion techniques of bacteria and spermatozoa to operate in the viscous fluid of the human renal system. Researchers at the Nanorobotics Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University are developing micro-robots that use tail-like flagella and cilia to swim. By spinning a synthetic helical tail, they move much like a corkscrew through a wine cork\u2014only to deliver diagnoses and drugs rather than to pop open a vintage. The 20-nm-wide prototypes under development move at about 6 ft. per hour\u2014ten times faster than regular E. coli bacteria (watch the micro swimming robot in action). Micro DoctorsA surgical robot that moves inside a patient&amp;#039;s body is of no use if the immune system rejects it. Materials that can slip by the human body&amp;#039;s defense forces are deemed biocompatible. Common biocompatible materials include surgical stainless steel (often used in medical instruments) and silicone (used in contact lenses and certain implants). Any hospital or tattoo shop will have these materials on hand, plus even tougher biocompatible materials such as Teflon and titanium. The combination of a titanium shell and Teflon cilia can come in handy, since robots must be thoroughly sterilized before they enter the body. For real-world use, surgical micro-robots must be able to withstand the autoclave, a 250-degree F., high-pressure steam bath that lasts for about 15 minutes and kills off unwanted bacterial organisms, fungi and viruses. During surgery, a robot also may have to weather nearby electrical shocks and heat from electrocautery instruments\u2014the surgical-grade branding irons that cook any persistant bleeders.  You are a dangerous environment, but robots are tough: In past columns we have learned how they travel to outer space, down to the bottom of the ocean and directly into nuclear radiation. Now, we see that microrobotics offers power in numbers (on the relative cheap) toward discoveries in inner space\u2014a hostile territory that has previously only been surveyed by a doctor&amp;#039;s probing finger. Daniel H. Wilson is the author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising and the forthcoming Where&amp;#039;s My Jetpack? You can ask him a question by e-mailing him at PMAsktheRoboticist@gmail.com.  Previous Resident Roboticist columns: Robots Are Tougher Than You (Part 3): Outer Space,Robots Are Tougher Than You (Part 2): Nuclear Radiation, Robots Are Tougher Than You (Part 1): The Deep Sea, Top 5 Robots that Own You, Top 5 Robots You Can Own, Pushing Human Boundaries, Living in a Robot Ecosystem (CLICK TO ENLARGE) So-called &amp;quot;wormbots&amp;quot; move through slimy spaces by wiggling and stretching. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a4016/4213385/>