The answer is yes! But the world is still not ready to comprehend the advancement humans made in the past three decades.
Many people are still stuck on, “are microbots real?” The real question is, “how did this crazy idea become a reality?”
Evolution of computing power
In the mid-1900s, IBM made the first storage device. It was bigger than our modern computers and weighed almost 10 pounds. The funny thing is that it could only hold a few bytes of data in such a large object. That was the peak of the 20th century.
Nowadays, everyone has a terabyte of storage in their pockets. Do you know how many zeros there are?
A lot!
Technology has come a long way. The amount of computing power that we have now is mind-blowing. As computing power became more efficient and portable, it created many opportunities for scientists.
Who made the Microbots?
One of the best inventions of science is microbots. In the beginning, microbots were developed and tested by the agencies and government officials.
They were mainly tested on war soldiers. In the 21st century, the technology became good enough to be controlled with radiation.
Microbots became useful after the development of microelectromechanical systems, aka MEMS.
The system allowed the remote-controlled use of microbots via electromagnetic radiation.
Ever since the development of the Wi-Fi, the controllability of the microbots have improved drasticlly.
Richard Feynman, 1959, a mastermind in quantum physics said in his writing, “there is plenty of room at the bottom,” he solidifies his idea that we could miniaturize technology in the near future. It will have a lot of room for computing power, and it will be the biggest enemy of surgeons.
Coming back to microbots, they are gaining popularity in recent years. One of the reasons was Elon Musk after his claims to put microchips in our brain to deal with cerebral problems that we humans cannot approach via surgeries.
The technology also made claims to provide senses in case a person has been missing one of them since birth. For example, if a child was born blind due to improper development of cranial nerves that supply our eye, the chip could provide impulses in place of the nerve.
What do microbots do?
Microbots have been around for some time and are used by surgeons to perform different surgeries. The microbots’ small size is what allows them to be flexible.
Since they are so small, they can quickly go inside our blood vessels and reach areas that surgeons cannot reach otherwise.
Microbots allow surgeons to open up the clogged arteries in case of thrombosis. The procedure is also safe since cutting off the arteries to access them is unnecessary.
These microbots can also supply a drug to the part of the body in case of surgery. It is more efficient than giving general or even localized anesthesia.
Us humans are controlling these microbots. According to Roboticist Bradley Nelson, the next challenge we face is to provide these microbots with some intelligence.
If scientists somehow manage to give intelligence to these microbots, it could be a game changer. We have human vaccines made out of dead or live bacteria and viruses. But soon, we will be able to inject microbots inside our bodies.
They would perform the same functions as our white blood cells to protect against harm. But our body fails to deal with another significant threat, cancer.
One of the ways they do it is by blocking the blood flow towards the cancerous cells. If the blood is cut off, the tumor will have no nutrition to grow and invade the body.
Microbots with intelligence will be able to detect these cancerous cells and destroy them in time. They will also help kill bacteria, viruses, and fungi. It has been proven that the blood samples with microbots had three times fewer toxins and pathogens than usual.
New hopes for microbots
Since its invention microbots have been moved by radiation. It drops the use of batteries. They are now helping in multiple surgical procedures throughout the world.
But scientists have new hopes for the technology. They want microbots to be self-aware.
Giving them intelligence and allowing them to roam the body of their free will. It will help us a lot in the field of medical science. For these purposes, scientists have taken motivation from the microbots of nature, bacteria.
Bacteria are tiny microorganisms that float freely around the body. They have a single cell structure and the most simplified form of machinery. The main thing holding back scientists is the computing power of microbots.
To allow the microbots to perform their tasks, on their own free will, means three things. Sensing the information about their surroundings, they know where to go. Next is analyzing the data that is provided by the sensory signal. And last is performing an appropriate action.
The DNA controls all these functions in bacteria. DNA is the natural version of storage. This store’s hundreds and thousands of GB of data in such a small form factor.
Science is still not advanced enough to manage that much computing power in such a small size. So, it is still far-fetched to allow microbots to move freely in our bodies.
But, the idea is not impossible. If we had told someone from the 1900s that we could hold TB data in our pocket, they would not have believed us.
Why do people have misconceptions about microbots?
People have misconceptions that agencies are already injecting us with microbots without our consent. With them, they would be able to track us and monitor our daily lifestyle. But, these claims are hardly valid since the technology as we know it is still not up to the level that we need.
Still, it would be beneficial for the longevity of humans if we developed the right technology. Microbots are now being replaced by nanobots, which may even replace our human cells in the near future.
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