Did Nature Inspire Humans in Shaping Nanorobots?
Humans are always inspired by nature to achieve nature’s perfect poise. Flying birds inspired Wright brothers to construct flying machines- airplanes. Burdock burrs sticking on furs of animals gave birth to the idea of developing Velcro- a wonderful cheap fastener.
Nature is scattered with plethoras of inspirational wonders- swimming fishes, perching birds, hunting animals, amazing trees, fascinating flowers and so on.
“Look deep into the Nature, and then you will understand better.”
- Albert Einstein
Biochemical machinery running inside the human body has always made human beings curious to make nanotechnologies which could mimic or extend them. Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa jointly received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016 “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.”
This clearly marked the advent of nanorobot era.
Developing nanorobots is about miniaturizing the robotics technology to nanometers scale (10-9meters) that is, 1000 times smaller than the width of human hair, invisible to human eyes. In the coming decades, nanorobotics will be an integral part of healthcare, expanding the reach of healthcare professionals to molecular and cellular levels of the body. No current technology and equipment has been able to reach there till now.
Nanorobots interacting with the cell organelles of the body- ribosomes, DNA, mitochondria will be able to diagnose or treat diseases at cellular scale with high specificity.
DNA is the ultimate source of all the genetic information present in one’s body. It sticks together naturally but specifically. Its unique structure and biological properties harness the ability to bind with the molecular structures.
DNA molecules have become a chemical tool to develop tiny self-assembling, programmable molecular systems which could easily roam inside the body at the sub-cellular level, without causing any adverse effect. American scientist, Dr. Nadrian Seeman of New York University pioneered the DNA-based nanotechnology to develop self -assembling DNA nanostructures. DNA origami helps in forming desired 3D shapes and structures from DNA for performing complex tasks in the body such as cell damage repair, zipping together biological tissues, transporting molecular cargo.
Self-assembling and self-replicating DNA origami scaffolds will remove the need for any external guidance to perform medical functions. Clinical applications of tiny nanorobots in future are wide ranging from targeted drug delivery, early diagnosis, nanorobotic surgery, laparoscopic functions and many other therapeutic functions in the treatment of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and neurological diseases and other chronic diseases.
Natural green algae have evolved their ability to sense light around them. They have inspired Dr. Jinyao Tang and team at the University of Hong Kong to develop the world’s first light-guided nanorobots. The synthetic nanorobots were made of silicon and titanium oxide and designed to respond to light by driving towards it.
Bats emit high-frequency ultrasound waves, inaudible to human ears. The waves hit nearby objects and return to the bats as an echo. The signals are collected by the bats for seamless navigation even at the darkest nights. Engineers at the National Technical University of Athens are working to develop nanorobots with the bat-like feature to move along the neurons in the brain to target a specific tumor.
Animals like bats, ants, bees work together without any centralized control. Swarming behavior of these animals was studied to develop nanorobots with swarm intelligence. Ant Colony Optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization, and Artificial Bee Colony are the three techniques inspired by their swarm behavior. The technique will help in the decentralized activity of swarms of nanorobots in the body.
Streamlined body and swimming style of the fishes has inspired Jinxing Li and the team at the University of California at San Diego to develop “nanofish” for medical drug delivery and non-invasive surgery in the body.
In future, fully artificial nanorobots would be developed using diamondoid material. Diamondoid is a diamond-shaped crystalline allotrope of carbon with unique strength and properties increasingly being used to shape molecular systems. They are inert and are used for developing nanoparts including sensors, motors, nanocomputers.
People fear entry of nanorobotics in medical arena as they are believed to destroy human emotions and human touch. Nanorobots are envisioned as creepy, crawly artificial metallic creatures having many arms and feets, parading in fleets to take over the human body. The uncontrolled self-replicating nanorobots in the body forming piles of “grey goo” on earth have always been the topic of concern in the community, so self-killing switches for the nanorobots are in development to tackle such situation.
Sending the swarms of nanorobots at the cellular level in the body in a controlled and guided way to eradicate diseases, correct faults of the body, monitor health would elevate the medical field and human existence to much higher level at an unprecedented speed in coming decades.
Elon Musk’s neurotechnology startup, Neuralink, and Bryan Johnson’s Kernel are working on nanorobotic brain implants and nanomachines in the blood vessels that could connect the neocortex in the brain with the cloud to enhance memory capacity and cognitive function, eradicating mental diseases in future. Expansion of brain neocortex in future with nanorobots could make us ‘God-like’ as indicated by the famous futurist Ray Kurzweil.