But now they will have to invent a commercial application for it, which won't be easy
A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems has developed a soft robot that effectively mimics a tiny jellyfish. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the group describes the robot and its capabilities.
As robotics technology evolves, the dream of building tiny robots that can swim through living organisms remains a serious goal. Such robots could deliver medicine, eat tumors or monitor vital organs. In this new effort, the team in Germany has developed an original design for such a robot based on jellyfish.
Jellyfish are quite graceful when swimming. Their umbrella-shaped bells pulsate to push them through the water. Their pulsating jelly-like mesoglea also impact the water around them, particularly just beneath them. As they pulsate, they pull water up below their bodies, which allows them to catch food—an attribute of the jellyfish that the researchers found useful.
To create a robot that mimics a jellyfish, the researchers created a bell and body from non-magnetic polymers in the form of eight arms. The also added embedded magnetic particles in the arms. One final touch—a tiny bubble of air trapped inside the top of the body to make the robot buoyant. The result was a robot (just three millimeters in diameter) that looks in some respects like a baby jellyfish—one that can be manipulated by applying an adjustable external magnetic field.
