At the centimeter scale significant milestones (Milirobots) |
1959 | Feynmen conceived the idea of miniature machines and their feasibility in his lecture on ‘There is plenty of room at the bottom’ | [3] |
1999 | The development of a crawling milirobot with inbuilt computing and power | [3] |
2000 | Micromechanical flying insects robot | [3] |
2001 | Under FDA authorization, the first capsule endoscope for medical application were employed in clinical trials. The addition of crawling mechanism and on board precise drug distribution has been introduced. | [3] |
2004 | A solar- powered crawling robot | [3] |
| Two explanted frog semitendinosus muscles are used to power a swimming appliance that is controlled by an embedded microcontroller. | [7] |
2005 | Cardiomyocytes implanted on a micromechanical device made of silicon (walking bio-hybrid microrobot) | [7] |
2007 | Cardiomyocytes were linked to a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) framework to construct a swimming crab-like bio-hybrid robot. | [7] |
| Pattern-alignment of a monolayer of Cardiomyocytes on PDMS thin film can be easily formed to synthesize highly customized series of bio-hybrid microrobots. | [7] |
2008 | Synthesis of a novel autonomous 2.4g crawling hexapod (RoACH) milirobot with on-board actuators, power, and control having flexible mechanisms | [8] |
2009 | The self-contractile dorsal-ventral-tissue (DVT) was excised, cultured and optimized to correspond to mammalian cardiac tissue in lepidopteran species (Ctenoplusia agnate) having actuators with piller-deflecting functions at room temperature stable for 90 days without medium replacement. | [7] |
2010 | Cellular level clinical robotic surgery involving intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection for in vitro fertilization. | [9] |
2012 | A bio-hybrid robot having similar muscle architecture and body shape of a Jelly fish was constructed utilizing appropriate cell patterning to exhibit similar motility as the real animal. | [7] |
2012 | Using excised dorsal vessel tissue (DVT) of inchworm, an autonomously moving polypod microrobot (PMR) was constructed | [10] |
2013 | An artificial biologically insect scale (80 milligram ) flapping wing-robot | [11] |
| An atmospheric-operable bioactuator (AOB)/microdevices fabricated by coupling insect dorsal vessel tissue (DVT) with microtweezers in a capsule with a finite amount of culture medium | [12] |
2016 | A bio-hybrid system which consist of tissue engineered analog of batoid fish such as skates, and stingrays that follows a phototactic guidance (optogenetics) | [13] |
At the submilimeter scale significant milestones |
| Untethered Microrobot | Reference(s) |
2003 | A novel surgical microrobot inspired by bacterial (E.coli) swimming propulsion for in-vivo application to destroy kidney stone as function of minimal invasive medical intervention | [14] |
2004 | “Auto-mobile chips” and/or “auto-mobile beads” | [15] |
2005 | A flexible artificial flagellum constructed through a series of colloidal magnetic particles (MPs) join through DNA with coupled red blood cells (RBCs) | [16] |
2006 | Electrostatic, untethered, two actuators based MEMS microrobot | [17] |
2006 | Untethered nickel microbiorobot driven by electromagnetic fields | [18] |
2006 | Laser-powered, thermally actuated, steerable untethered locomotive devices | [19] |
2007 | Untethered 1.5mm diameter ferromagnetic beads were demonstrated in vivo as mili-robots or devices having controls and tracking in a living swine carotid artery using clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). | [20] |
2009 | An untethered microrobot actuated by pulsed electromagnetic field having “stick-slip motion” | [21] |
2011 | Optically driven bubble microrobot | [22] |
2012 | Microrobots are driven directly by the transfer of momentum from a directed laser spot. Light sailboats: laser driven autonomous microrobots | [23] |
2012 | Fuel-free (off board approach) locomotion of spherical magnetic Janus motor driven by magnetically induce temperature gradient (thermophoresis) e.g. hyperthermia, and drug carrier for anticancer therapy | [24] |
2013 | Micro-bio-robot development driven by sperm flagella was developed (Spermbots) | [25] |
2013 | Microdrillers composed of tubular Ti/Cr/Fe having sharp ends and can be used for ex vivo mechanical drilling of swine hepatic tissue | [26] |
2015 | Artificially motorized sperm cells delivered to oocyte for fertilization | [27] |
2015 | A micro propellers actuated by means of magnetism can navigate through gastric mucin while immobilized/functionalized with urease that mimic H. pylori propulsion in stomach lining | [28] |
2015 | Magnetic helical microswimmers surface-functionalized with lipoplexes (loaded with plasmid DNA or pDNA) to generate functionalized artificial bacterial flagella (f-ABFs) used for targeted single-cell gene delivery to human embryonic kidney cells (HEK 293) | [29] |
2015 | Stimuli (thermo-magnetic) responsive hydrogel based actuators, self folding soft microgrippers for biomedical (surgical) application in soft robotics | [30] |
2016 | Use of two state (magneto-aerotactic) migrations of magnetotactic bacteria, Magnetococcus marinus strain MC-1 for transport of drug loaded nano-liposomes into hypoxic regions of HCT116 colorectal xenografts. | [31] |
2016 | Medibots: dual action as cellular microsurgery with drug-rehabilitation | [32] |
2016 | A stimuli (pH) responsive hydrogel based soft microrobot/microdevices actuated through an electromagnetic actuation system (EMA) for targeted delivery of therapeutics agents such as anticancer drug PCL-DTX | [33] |
2017 | Biohybrid magnetic robots (BMRs) for image-guided biodegradable therapeutic inventions | [34] |
2018 | Multifunctional superparamagnetic/catalytic microrobots made up of iron oxide/polymer janus particle partly coated with platinum (PM/Pt) microrobots for cell manipulation, anticancer doxorubicin (DOX) therapeutics loading, and transportation to breast cancer cells | [35] |
2018 | Burr-like porous spherical microrobot for capturing and targeting cells | [36] |
2018 | Intravascular microrobots/magnetic drilling actuators (MDAs) are devices for treatment of circulatory system disease e.g. removal of thrombus | [37] |
2018 | Magnetically actuated peanut-shaped colloid motor for non-contact fluidic manipulation and patterning of cells in an autonomously controlled manner | [38] |
2018 | 1st (novel) slippery micropropeller (a microvehicles for delivery of intravitreal) that drives through vitreous body of eye to reach retina. | [39] |
2019 | Catalytic antimicrobial robots (CARs) for biofilm eradication by, “kill-degrade-remove” | [40] |
2019 | Micron-sized magnetic hair-derived robots (hairbots) for autologous cargo carriers for guided drug delivery, bioimaging (ultrasound contrast agent), and untethered osteogenesis | [41] |
2019 | 3D-printed, biodegradable microrobotic swimmers for theranostic cargo delivery and release | [42] |
2019 | Ex-vivo generation of medium induced swarms and their targeted deliveries in the bovine eyeball | [43] |
2019 | The inclusion of radioactive compound in soft thermoresponsive magnetic microrobots for single-photon emission computed tomography imaging (SPECT) | [44] |
2019 | Multi-spectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) is a new tool for localization and monitoring a single rotating microobjects (components of a medical microrobot) in hard-to-reach target sites | [45] |
2019 | Magnetically actuated scaffold-type microrobots as a tool for precise stem cell delivery and transportation in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo | [46] |
2020 | “Walking micromachines (microrobotic scalpels) for cancer cells microsurgery | [47] |
2020 | CIP@T-Budbots is a plant-based magnetic microrobot for “kill-n-remove” biofilm | [48] |
2020 | Leukocyte-inspired multifunctional microrollers for targeted active cargo delivery and control navigation inside the blood flow | [49] |
2020 | Non-invasive, magnetic micromotor-assisted zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT) by capture with help of micropropellers such as helix, and spiral, transport and release the cellular cargo | [50] |
2020 | Hybrid sperm micromotor for heparin cargo delivery through continuous and pulsatile blood flow | [51] |