Talking to machines? Ok. But are you ready to swallow them?

 

Perhaps you remember the "Innerspace" movie from the 80's, where a man in a kind of submarine, both miniaturized, where travelling inside a man's body, and talking to him using a loudspeaker.

A good comedy, very funny of course, since it is so unusual to imagine oneself having a robot swimming inside one's body.

Does this technology will soon exist? Probably yes. And some improvements are fore-casted compared to the "Innerspace's submarine"!

Here is an example of blood swimming robot, that provides a dose of medication directly to the infected area. It also illustrates the basic principles of nanorobots' design.

 

There are also some ambitious projects, like solving infertility problems using robots able to detect and bring suitable sperm cells.

 

Ok, these robots seem to be hard workers, fair enough. But we are here to talk to machines, so what about talking with these robots?

Is the loudspeaker missing ???

At first, these robots will take wireless instructions from a computer host outside of the patient's body. This is essential for patients requiring constant monitoring, such as tumor status or diabet.

But let's recap: wireless connection, computer, so...

Will I be able to use my smart-phone to monitor my body ???

Probably yes. Some applications already exist, for example the Sanofi's blood glucose monitor system dedicated to diabetes (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2113676), but are based on a combination of an application and a hardware external device.

This is emphasized on the following system, which manages ECG monitoring.

So we know that the business applications are here, but the challenge now is to replace the external device by an internal specialized nanorobot, able to send monitoring info using wireless connection.

Here are some challenges of this future technology:

• To be able to get the robot out of the patient's body (assuming that it will not be as easy as a sneeze, like in Innerspace movie)
• To manage the maintenance of the robot once in the body
• To ensure that the robot cannot harm the patient's body