Australians build tiny motor for fantastic voyages inside humans

By William Atkins
Wednesday, 21 January 2009 03:42

Science - Biology

Engineers from Monash University (Victoria, Australia) have built a miniature mechanical motor for a microbot that could someday cruise through miniscule human arteries of the brain, heart, and eyes.


The motor was named Proteus by the Australian engineers in honor of the miniature submarining vessel Proteus that traveled through the human body in the 1966 science fiction movie Fantastic Voyage.

The Proteus motor built by the Australian engineers is about one millimeter long and approximately one-fourth millimeter wide (less than the width of three human hairs).

It is powered by piezoelectric material that vibrates when an electric field is applied.

The motor then absorbs the vibrations and converts them into a spinning force (over one thousand spins per second) that rotates a tiny stainless-steel ball.

The researchers involved with the design of the microbot state that it could move through the arteries of the body at about six centimeters per second when traveling in the direction of blood flow.

The conclusions of the study were published on January 20, 2009, in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering (DOI: 10.1088/09601317/19/2/022001).

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