The New Science of Microscopic Robots 

I hadn’t even settled down properly for a new SH video and I’m already having shade thrown at me! Well if teenybots can render me jobless then bring them on I say! I’m more than ready to retire/pivot to full time beauty influencer

Think about the very dangerous applications too. Some examples: quick assassination; slow assassination by creating lethal disease; weaponization of upcoming neuroscience discoveries into tools of mind control. Even without new neuroscience discoveries, crude mind control seems possible. For example, robots that covertly migrate to the brain's pleasure center and stimulate pleasure whenever they receive a signal from a companion robot that sends the signal whenever it hears the voice of a particular person.

As a child, loved the film "Fantastic Voyage" which was also about people being miniaturised and injected into a person. I think Isaac Asimov was one of the writers involved with the film.

Another downside to xenobots I learned after talking with the principal investigators of the research was that they have a limited amount of energy, that's inherited from the epithelial tissue that from which they are harvested. Great video as always Sabine.

Your uploads make my day/evening Sabine. Please never stop.

"Tiny robots, in the wine, Make me feel happy, make me feel fine". _(sorry, that lyric popped in my head about halfway through the video, and wouldn't go away 🙂)_

I started watching this channel for the pragmatic approach to science topics and the simple explanations but really one of the best things of the channel is Sabine's sense of humour.

*Injecting robots to eat micro plastics* Sounds an awful lot like the old lady that swollowed a fly...

Fascinating video, Sabine! I had heard of some of this technology, but I hadn't realized how fast it is growing. Thanks for keeping us up-to-date on the world of science. Your videos are inspiring, entertaining, and informative!

Richard Feynman -- yes, that guy again -- became very interested in nanomachines late in his career. A very tiny machine he built is on display at Caltech... or at least it used to be; I saw it years ago when I audited his course on nano-related algorithms. (I suspect he taught it in order to learn from our answers to his homework problems.)

A long time ago I had an idea for a book that I even wrote some 10 pages of, but didn't continue. It was a Sci-fi about nanobots being used as superpowers, you could control them to fly around and grab things to you or make them grab you to make you levitate, protect you from physical dangers, like hardening your skin against impacts and stuff like that. I was wondering if anyone know some book with this concept? I know Christopher Paolini did something like this in "To sleep in the sea of stars" but its not quite the same. I was looking for some more psychic like powers. *Sorry if bad english, not my language

As a researcher working on microrobots, I am really glad to find such an informative and up-to-date video on RU-vid. Thank you Sabine for your nice work!!

Scientists: How can we produce nanomachines massively? Viruses: Hi, are you asking for help?

I came across your channel yesterday and have watched a lot of your videos by now. Great work! Gives me motovation for my Ph.D research. Thank you.

One example I am dreaming of are nano bots who are removing plaque from the teeth. Preferable during night.

to be precise, there is one thing that cannot be miniaturised, Professor, it's our appreciation for your work

When a "tinybot" is being moved by external forces coming from machines that are not "tiny", I don't think it really makes sense to call them robots in the first place; they're just tools, like scissors or tweezers, being manipulated by something else.

Interesting, but also a bit worrying. We've seen how beneficial computer programs can be, and how harmful computer viruses can be. Both are "programs," one used for good and one for ill. Tracking what such tiny bots might be doing, particularly in the wrong hands, is going to be a challenge. Along with a VPN, you may need a VPB (virtual private body) to stay safe in such a world.

I really look forward to your videos. I particularly enjoy the breadth of subjects that you cover. Enjoyable, informative and brief, a perfect combination! I love the injection of occasional humor also!

I think one issue that is not discussed fully is the issue of biocompatibility and immunogenicity (for some nasty examples look at botched silicone implant surgeries). A lot of inorganic materials, which would be useful for a nanobot can trigger nasty reactions inside the human body. One really cool development are synthetic cells with expanded genetic codes, that accommodate more nucleotides and amino acids then what is found in nature. This paper I thought was interesting in this regard: Expanding the amino acid repertoire of ribosomal polypeptide synthesis via the artificial division of codon boxes. This would allow for the incorporation of novel / manufactured amino acids, containing metals / inorganic functional groups, which can form proteins that act as an interface for the inorganic robots.

I just did the math with the data you provided: If a thousand robots cost 1 USD and a 1 cm3 tumor has 100 Mio cells you’ll need robots worth a total of 100,000 USD. I just had a 500 cm3 tumor removed, I guess 50 Mio USD would’ve done the trick :)

Like nearly every report made by Sabine, this is so interesting information, well researched and lovely presented.

I loved Inner Space when I was a kid, it always cracked me up when Martin Short turned into the Cowboy. If hybrid micro bots might be attacked by the immune system, could they be used as a decoy to get the immune system to stop attacking other parts of the body in auto immune diseases?

They could make those bots into an RFDI transponder, and add them to vaccines, to easily check the vaccination status, and report drug abuse.

Okay, but the real question is... ...can they harden in response to physical trauma?

Full-function tiny robots already exist. Bacteria and virus are examples. Traditional mechanical "tiny robots" may eventually have some very specific applications, but my money is on bio-engineering - programming molecules and micro-organisms to perform tasks for us.

Thank you for explaining these complex topics in an understandable manner.

I kept hearing "xenobots" as "casinobots" and wondered if they would be a gambling aid. A team of casinobots could steer the roulette ball to the desired numbered slot.

This is fascinating! So much progress since I last read about it! Thank you for what you do, Sabine. It's appreciated. 🙂

Sabine, your ability to elucidate diverse subjects is unparalleled. The video was great to watch and very informative.

5:52 John Conway's contribution here must not be ignored.

I rather suspect that the further we go down this path functionally, the more we're going to tend to copy biological mechanisms in the development of micro/nanobots. The fact is that biology is a few billion years ahead of us in the nanoscale mechanics business, and we have a vast amount to learn about how it works and can be manipulated. They are for the time being vastly more sophisticated than anything even our macro-scale robots are capable of, much less our microscale ones. In its simplest approach it's how we make organically processed foodstuffs, like cheese and beer - simply by co-opting existing microbes into our industrial processes - but that's a long tech tree that clearly extends far, far beyond where we are today. Learning how to manipulate this organic machinery and how to introduce artificial new functions or mechanisms to cells, bacteria, virus, or prions seems likely to become one of the most profound categories of technology in the future as our understanding of it matures. Hard to imagine silicon tech competing save in contexts that are overtly hostile to chemical processes (such as space). Note that I'm not just talking about guided evolution, which is one of our main means of manipulating these today, but full on genetic manipulation, and even further on the overt co-opting and redesign of low level cellular mechanics to perform entirely new functions or profoundly change how they behave, operating at the boundary between biology and chemistry.

Medlife Crisis Rohin could become a rogue nanobot overlord.

Damn, I wish I could live long enough to experience the dystopian nightmare we're about to unleash. I'm sure our future robot overlords would all be the benevolent rulers we imagine them to be 😁

You bring science down to earth, and I love that. Thank you. Danke. Takk. Bedankt. God bless.

Reminds me of the movie Fantastic Voyage, which inspired Innerspace. "Voyage" starred Raquel Welch, among others. I don't know if I'd be comfortable with tiny robots roaming around inside me; I'd much rather have a miniaturized Raquel Welch in there. 😀

I can't help but think about the SciFi notion of turning our planet into 'gray goo' when somehow we create self replicating nanobots and they run amuck due to unforeseen consequences. The 'precautionary principle' should be strictly adhered to as we develop this technology which has so much potential for good. Thanks for the update on some of the recent developments of this research. Very interesting.

Can't quite put my finger on it but I learn well from people I admire a lot 🤦 Sabine, thanx for all the research for your channel and for keeping it real 💓

Innerspace was AWESOME! Meg and Mini-Quad and Martin Short were one of the coolest, funnest comedy trio ever! It was a sci-fi/James Bond monster!! Good to see Sabrine appreciated that comedy!

This reminds me of Star Trek Voyager where Seven of Nine are occasionally called to sickbay to donate some nanobots to help someone in need. And the following fear that that the nanobotswill convert the patient to a Borg...

A virus is a tiny robot.

To be honest, I was hoping that xenobots were based on non-terrestrial materials - possibly even programmed by Martians, who having been defeated by the bacteria in the War of the Worlds, were attempting to establish a new outpost. Sometimes fiction is still stranger than truth... (Brilliant survey of the current state of the art, Sabine!)

I love the curl of hair that gave Sabine a monocle for a bit.

I remember on a science show 'tomorrow's world' in UK many years ago, they showed nano machines that had tiny gears driven by a sort of micro steam engine that used body temperature to power it, the gears chipped away at build up of fat in arteries, like many things on that show we never saw anything about it again

Every once in a while I get this inkling about our nature. Something about magnetic polarity. That the model nature grew from is still based on elemental forces. This includes how we think and respond to stimulus. I'm imagining a movie, where an early character is killed in a robbery, but as he's dying, he realises something about existence, and he whispers, "It's a wheel." The robber hears it, and it keeps coming back to him. It haunts him, until it's his turn. But he doesn't say it. We do.

Have you seen "Fantastic Voyage"? (that was during my era :) )

1:25 Amazing now we can make even smaller things children can accidentally swallow! xD

"there isn't a lot of sunlight in the human body." BUT I AM BRILLIANT

This is a technology we should not sell under any circumstances to Vlad the Assassin.

Think, genetically engineered microbes would make more sense.

easy, cheap, and fast -- is that a good or bad first date?

My most interesting fact about the body is that proteins walking move the equivalent of a car going 360km/h which is hella fast. at 60% efficiency instead of cars 10%. They are also pretty cute ngl.

Don't worry, I'm sure this won't be used against humanity. Only to help people.

I remember seeing the film as a teenager as well. Which gives me a headache to this day: The man was saved but what happened to the submarine. Did the patient have to explode when the submarine returned to its original size?

I wonder if these tiny robots could be of use in hazardous waste sites? I'm not sure if there is a chemical solution to places like Love Canal in New York State in the first place.

In minute 10:30 has a err or in subtitle. Please repair. Thanks a lot.

The Borg

Sabine, People should really do a study on psychic people. I finally think I know what it is. It's an involuntary and subconscious stress related response. I saying that most "activity" is during stressful periods. I think it may be an early evolutionary trait. And its only affected by other humans. (Not tarot cards, sadly)

Very fascinating. These look pretty promising. I'll have to keep my ear to the wall.

It's always a good day when Sabine releases a new video 😀😃

K. Eric Drexler's predictions starting to come true. Still waiting for the universal "assembler"!

0:13 "Fantastic Voyage" - starring Raquel Welch - was my generation's version of that movie. MAD Magazine (did they publish a German-language version?) did a great parody of it.

There was another interesting movie from the 1960's titled, "The Fantastic Voyage". Your report was very interesting and I believe in its infinancy stage.

Can you please make a video on how to search the research articles whic are not related to one's own research area ?

As Always , Perfect Ya Sabine

that's right... nano-machines.

Nanobots are already real and have been for years in the form of bioengineered enzymes, GMO microbes, and synthetic lifeforms made with synthetic genomes (which are not all based on DNA but rather can be based on PNA or GNA).

my favorite anime used "nanomachines" injected into the bloodstream as explanation for its magic-adjacent powers lol

This reminds me of that futurama episode

maybe glucose could power it from something like blood sugar, if for example they/it was injected into a vein or an artery. that may even work better with biological technology.

I have a friend who has had multiple stents inserted into his body. He's convinced that they are self-organising into a 5G antenna

1:24 That tick is churning out conspiracy theories about the Circular Polyknob Cabal

Fascinating content, I knew that this technology was being researched from some time ago but I hadn’t explored any recent updates , thank you for the details.

I'll be honest here, I thought this would have been a far more commonplace occurrence these days! Nano tech should have been done by now?

_Fantastic Voyage,_ a movie a generation before _Inner Space,_ was the original and unintentionally campy "shrink 'em" film.

Just think of all the nightmarish things that can be done with all this stuff. How's that smart dust looking now?

As someone with an autoimmune disease these bots scare the sh*t out of me. If a billion year old much-tested system can backfire and start eating its parent organism no way we’re going to be able to make bots reliable any time soon. Like, in this aeon. Grey goo is the least of our problems - just plain incompetence plus greed is going to kill us long before that becomes a posibility. Not to mention tinkerers/hackers/crackers….

A few years ago I read about DNA nanobots. These are the simplest things one might call a "bot". They are essentially a capsule made of two halves connected by a hinge and held shut by a latch. Why they are interesting: one can "program" the latch to pop open when the latch bumps into a specific protein, such as a protein only found on a cancer cell. They are "DNA nanobots" because they are made from DNA; one needs trillions of these nanobots so it is essential that they self-assemble. So, a few trillion nanobots are encouraged to grow; they are then filled with some anti-cancer drug, and then injected into the patient. As I understand it, they just flow through the body, floating in the blood, randomly bumping into things; and then when a nanobot happens to bump into a cancer cell, the latch opens and a nano-dose of drug is released, right next to the cancer cell. We know many drugs that are effective at killing cancer, but unfortunately kill healthy tissue as well. Nanodoses of such drugs, delivered only at the actual cancer, should kill the cancer with minimal bad effects on the patient. In short, DNA nanobots decouple the problems of a drug being "safe" and "effective". Putting an effective drug that is not safe into the nanobots makes them safe! Here is a paper referencing the original DNA nanobots I read about. (I think multiple teams in multiple countries are working on this idea.) www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10047

Thank you Sabine, this was educational. 😁👌

Vibration and thermal isolated cleanrooms having air shower entryways along with cryopumped vacuum chambers are essential to manufacture integrated circuits so it is a question of how long can microscopic robots could endure outside a cleanroom.

Sabine, I always enjoy your videos. They are informative and give me incites into what may be coming up in the future. I am a PHD organic chemist with some experience in the pharmaceutical arena. I see the fascination one can have with tiny robots but they really are not at all that small. The compounds developed in the pharma industry are much much smaller and are potentially just as capable. I think many of the problems you have discussed could be solved using organic chemistry if properly focused and funded. Not exciting but possible. If a nano bot comes along that does the job, however, I’m 100% for it. We can develop a nano-backpack loaded with organic compound tools that it could carry over its shoulder on its way to work!

'Lebenserhaltungssystem: höchste Alarmstufe!' Mr. Igor war beeindruckender Bösewicht in Mad Max 2. Meg Ryan kommt gut rüber.

Excellent, Sabine

Always enjoy your videos. Love your sense of humor. Thanks for the videos.

There has been a paper demonstrating navigating a nanobot through a body using an MRI

I'm highjacking this post to brainstorm about some of my own imaginings on nanobots. In my opinion, artificial organelles are the obvious choice for building nanomachines. They'd be built out of readily available, non toxic materials already found in living systems and that are already fine tuned for interacting in a nanoscopic universe. A modified mitochondria, complete with its own DNA, ribosomes and cellular respiration, could be programmed to express any gene we program into it. Whether they're from another living organism or completely artificial in origin. Currently DNA-based-computers are used in an abiological setting, but if that information could be encoded onto a plasimid, it could be expressed directly from an artificial organelle, and mass produced on the microscopic scale as the cell culture replicates. Meaning computers smaller than cells would be capable of performing complex calculations. Another concept I often consider is microwifi. Modified ferritin enzymes could be developed to receive and transmit radio signals in micro or nanohertz ranges, producing extremely short range signals that could be used to coordinate intra-organelle, intra-cellular, and inter-cellular activity. A cloud network could network all of these smaller organelles together producing a cloud network with a much greater, cumulative processing capacity comprised of millions or even billions of nanomachines. This network could be used to upload and download genes, compare somatic mutations on neighboring genomes, and monitor/modify activity on a cell by cell basis. All of which can be interfaced with using a handheld wireless device. Imagine if instead of administering an antibiotic or antiviral, you could just download them instead. Or at the very least download them into a programmable vaccine. A universal injectable that can be mass produced and sold for practically at cost. Or if you could run a virus or cancer scan and deliver drugs directly to the target. Or deliver transcription factors for in vivo immunotherapy. Or even to monitor and correct somatic mutations that occur over time as a result of normal aging. How artificial organelles can solve for some of the problem's presented in Sabine's amazing video: "friction and surface tension become vastly more important" - a problem a single celled organelle has already been finely tuned for. "you need them in large numbers and they must be able to coordinate their tasks" - artificial organelles reproduce via mitosis, allowing you to maximize your number of artificial organelles while minimizing costs. Whereas microwifi allows you to coordinate all those individual cells using a wireless cloud network. artificial organelles are ideal for accomplishing both of these tasks. "a few millimeters are still pretty large if you want to move around in the human body" - artificial organelles would be around to 0.5 to 3 µm. (the size of a mitochondrion) "if one illuminates the solar cell with laser pulses, then the legs move," "the researchers hope that in the future the robots can operate with sunlight as a power source" - artificial organelles can be designed to operate on sugar and oxygen, just like normal cells, and which is plentiful in a living, biological setting. "except, well, we might just swap microplastic pollution for microbot pollution" - artificial organelles are made from protein, dna and lipids. All of which are biodegradable and a source of food for other living organisms if damaged or destroyed. They can even be programmed to auto-cannibalize and leave no trace of them behind when a therapy is complete. "robots in the human body may be attacked by the immune system" - an artificial organelle can be programmed to express any protein programmed into it on its cell surface. It can even adopt techniques used by other living systems, like those used by malaria or hiv to evade the immune system. "but the production of these xenobots currently requires a lot of craftmanship" - artificial organelles would be constructed by directly modifying the genome of a living sample of mitochondria. nothing would be done by hand. instead an adenoviral vector would deliver the new genetic information to the organelle which would be integrated into its genome using CRISPR. All of the behavior of the artificial organelle would then be regulated through gene expression. After that, genes can be uploaded via microwifi and mass produced via self-replication. So direct modification would only be relevant for the earliest versions, and each version could be scalably mass produced via self-replication in a bioreactor after that. Tell your friends. Spread the word before I'm too old to live forever.

I'm curious what the immune response would be like for injected micro/nanobots, and whether that's a problem or a good thing (perhaps that could keep them localised within a cancer tumor, perhaps I'm being too optimistic). I seem to recall a scene in Inner Space where they were attacked by (I think) a white blood cell, the ship obviously survived but I'm not sure about the bots!

Speaking of mini-robots…one of the best and most unappreciated short sci-fi stories by non other than the infamous Micheal Crighton (Jurassic park + more)…is his book “Prey”. It’s about nanobots…self replicating and hive mind nanobots, that have such an advanced AI, that the nanobots can even collect together and form an actual copy of a human being. Very creepy, if you allow yourself to get lost in the story and ignore how advanced the science is in the sci-fi book.

I want to mention CAR T cells, because you may found them interesting in this context: They are T cells of the human immune system modified to express a Chimeric Antigen Receptor, so that they can go after molecules of choice in the human body the way they would normaly do with pathogens. Currently they are already used in cancer treatments, they are particulary useful against blood's cancers! To me they are an example of successful tiny bots, most of them is compleately natural and not even understood by sciece, but people have been able to modify artificialy a small part and give the wole system a new function. This, in my opinion, will be the most efficient way forward for a while: kind of hacking a natural system to give it new functions. There are natural technologies developped for billions of years that await us in every living being. Unfortunately many of us don't realize it and they are bussy triggering a mass extinction that is wipping out pleanty of life forms before we are even aware of their existance and the wonders they could teach us.

"Watch out were those nanobots go - and don't you eat that robot snow" - Frank Zappa, in the year 2776.

Could self-replicating nanobots lead to a potential greygoo apocalyptic scenario?

I grew up in the US and there is a stereotype here where a German accent is associated with precision and technical excellence. There seems to be a similar stereotype in the UK. I wonder if that is strictly an English language thing or if that is the case for other languages. Does Spanish spoken with a German accent evoke the same impression? Or French? Anyway, that is a long way to go to say that I really enjoy your videos, DR. H. They are excellent on their own merits but, to my American ears, your accent improves any scientific or technical content.

Well, I've never seen Innerspace, but the concept sounds pretty similar to 'Fantastic Voyage' to me...

I would be fascinated, if there weren’t so many evil people... instead I’ll be forced to wonder about the new evil ways madmen will conceive to hurt more people

We could probably change the way we think about surgery with microbot access. For instance, instead of individually injecting cancer cells with drugs, we could use the bots to define the area of the cancer precisely and literally quarantine the tumor. Basically, the bots would just be "hunter-cutters" and could slice tumor cells so cleanly away from healthly cells we could completely forgo drug and radiation therapy.The robots could literally for prophylactic shields that could be used to encase harmful foreign cells or cancer cells. Much easier than complex action.

Hum... Innerspace wuz one of my favorites too!

Some of these objects don't move or have locomotion without an outside force pushing them. What makes them 'robots'?

Danke schön Guru! This is a subject matter about which I had zero knowledge. You could also have added something about miniaturised camera that are sent into the human body.

Auto-repair nanites : sign me up! 🤖

I think inner space may have been derivative from Fantastic Voyage penned by Isaac Asimov. I've wondered about these things in the past. It also reminds me of conspiracy theories (hypotheses?) Describing "programmable matter". Thanks Sabine, very interesting. I'm also interested in the possibility that viruses could be partially robotic. Biologists tend to say that a virus is not alive though perhaps I've transcended psuedoscience and moved into the realm of the utterly preposterous.