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Stephen Chen

According to an ancient southern Chinese form of black magic known as Gu a small poisonous creature similar to a worm could be grown in a pot and used to control a person’s mind.
Now a team of researchers in Shenzhen have created a robot worm that could enter the human body, move along blood vessels and hook up to the neurons.
“In a way it is similar to Gu,” said Xu Tiantian, a lead scientist for the project at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“But our purpose is not developing a biological weapon. It’s the opposite,” she added.
Meet ‘PigeonBot’, the drone taking aircraft closer to feathered flight
In recent years, science labs around the world have produced many micro-bots but mostly they were only capable of performing some simple tasks.
But a series of videos released by the team alongside a study in Advanced Functional Materials earlier this month show that the tiny intelligent robots – which they dubbed iRobots – can hop over a hurdle, swim through a tube or squeeze through a gap half its body width.
The 1mm by 3mm robotic worms are not powered by computer chips or batteries, but by an external magnetic field generator.

Changing the magnetic fields allows the researchers to twist the robot’s body in many different ways and achieve a wide range of movements such as crawling, swinging and rolling, according to their paper.
They can also squeeze through gaps by using infrared radiation to contract their bodies by more than a third.
The worm’s body is also capable of changing colour in different environments because it is made from a transparent, temperature-responsive hydrogel and the video shows that when added to a cup of water at room temperature they become almost invisible.
How traditional Chinese acupuncture with an electric twist could help fight cancer
It also has a “head” made from a neodymium iron-boron magnet and a “tail” constructed from a special composite material.
Xu believes they will prove particularly useful for doctors in the future, for example by being injected into the body and delivering a package of drugs to a targeted area, for example a tumour.
This would limit the effect of the drug to the areas where it is needed and reduce the risk of side effects and the robot worm could exit the body once its task is complete.
The patient would need to lie in an MRI style machine that generates the magnetic field needed to control the robots during the procedure.

It could also be implanted into the brain because its high mobility and ability to transform means it can survive in this harsh environment where there are rapid blood flows and tiny blood vessels.
Currently, brain implants can only be inserted via a surgical procedure and have a limited capability to integrate with the neurons, which means they can only perform a few simple tasks.
But Xu said the new robots could “work as an implant for brain-computer interface” that would make it possible to communicate directly with a computer without needing a keyboard or even a screen.
She believes this would work by carrying a transmitter that converts external signals into an electric pulse and connect with brain cells to stimulate activities that are not possible using current technology.
Chinese study finds male birth control drug may hold promise for treating lung cancer
Xu admitted that it may be possible to misuse the technology by turning it into a weapon, but said there were still some major barriers to making this effective.
For instance, the controller would need to build a powerful electric field generator with a long effective range to operate the robot worms.
It would also be very difficult to send the microbots to their designated locations without the cooperation of the person they are implanted into because they have to sit or lie down and stay perfectly still while they are moving through the body.
But improving the hardware may overcome these obstacles so Xu could not rule out the possibility the technology could be weaponised one day, but added: “We just hope that day will never come.”

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Science

Meet the Chinese robot worm that could crawl into your brain

The device could be sent into the brain and transmit electric pulses to the neurons. Photo: Shutterstock

A team of researchers in Shenzhen have created a similar worm-like robot that could enter in human body, move along blood vessels and hook up to neurons.  HANDOUT PHOTO

Tianjin’s government is in talks to sell two listed technology firms to Chinese consumer electronics giant TCL

A general view of televisions at the TCL (The Creative Life) booth at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center on January 11, 2012 in Las Vegas. Photo: Getty Images/AFP

How traditional Chinese acupuncture with an electric twist could help fight cancer

The treatment was inspired by the traditional Chinese treatment. Photo: Shutterstock

Acupuncture needles with electric charge can significantly reduce the size of a tumor, opening ways to a new cancer treatment approach with low cost and little side effect, according to a new study by Chinese scientists.ÊProfessor Jin Yongdong and colleagues inserted a pair of needles into the head of mice suffering brain tumor. One needle had negative charge, the other positive, and they were coated by insulation materials with exposed tips placed closely inside the tumor.ÊWhen turned on, the electric current could break water molecules to oxygen and hydrogen, the latter Òcausing the cancer cells to burst and die,Ó according to their paper published this month on National Science Review, a peer-reviewed journal with high impact.Photo:Chinese Academy of Sciences

New push to revive China’s wild yellow croaker fish stocks after Chinese paddlefish goes extinct

Fish farms supply most of the yellow croaker that finds its way onto Chinese tables. Photo: Xinhua

=== PHOTO CAPTURED FROM WEIBO === Chinese scientists are stepping up conservation efforts to protect the wild yellow croaker fish in East China Sea, by putting them under wilderness trainings before releasing into sea, state media Xinhua reports. The news came about two weeks after Chinese paddlefish, an indigenous to the Yangtze River and one of the worldÕs largest freshwater fish, was declared to have gone extinct, sending the public in a woe over wild animalsÕ plight.The yellow croaker fish is the most popular sea fish on mainland peopleÕs table, but a majority of those available at market is from fish farms. WEIBO

China is developing drones that use quantum physics to send unhackable messages

Chinese researchers have developed a way for drones to share information securely. Photo: Nanjing University

A Nanjing University research team has developed the world's first fleet of drones equipped with quantum communication technology so that robots can share information in  secrecy with human operator and among themselves. Photo: Nanjing University

News

China

Scientists in Shenzhen are developing a machine that sounds like a form of ancient black magic because it could enter the brain and send signals to the neurons
Magnetically controlled device could be used to deliver drugs or interact directly with computers


Scientists in Shenzhen are developing a machine that sounds like a form of ancient black magic because it could enter the brain and send signals to the neurons.


Meet the Chinese robot worm that could crawl into your brain

Scientists in Shenzhen are developing a machine that sounds like a form of ancient black magic because it could enter the brain and send signals to the neurons Magnetically controlled device could be used to deliver drugs or interact directly with computers

Scientists in Shenzhen are developing a machine that sounds like a form of ancient black magic because it could enter the brain and send signals to the neurons

Magnetically controlled device could be used to deliver drugs or interact directly with computers