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Non-Metallic Squishy Magnets May Soon Power Robots

What do soft robots, medical devices and implants, and next-generation drug delivery methods have in common? Hint: They could all soon be guided with magnetism, thanks to a metal-free magnetic gel developed by researchers at the University of Michigan and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent. Watch this video to learn more.

“If these materials can safely degrade in your body, you don’t have to retrieve them with another surgery later,” said Abdon Pena-Francesch  , assistant professor of materials science and engineering affiliated with the Robotics Institute at the University of Michigan and a corresponding author of the study. “This is still pretty exploratory, but these materials could enable newer, cheaper medical operations some day.”

Topics:
Materials

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    Transcript

    00:00:01 we interested in developing magnets that are squishy and soft so they can be moved through the body this is a squishy magnet developed by Material Science and Engineering Professor abnom pen francisque and his team at the University of Michigan it's a non-metallic gel that could lead to a major breakthrough in Soft Robotics and medical devices the flexible limbs of

    00:00:24 soft robots are perfect for accessing heart to reach places or for performing sensitive medical procedures but their tethered power supplies make them difficult to operate magnets are a great method of actuation for Soft Robotics for several reasons uh you can activate things remotely and they give you a lot of control the problem is that you need magnetic material for that right and

    00:00:47 some of them are toxic and they're heavy and difficult to implement in soft robotic uh designs the squishy magnet is made from a gel consisting of organic molecules which can be formed into any shape desired the key ingredient named Tempo has unpaired electrons that align in a magnetic field giving the gel its magnetic properties this team is the

    00:01:10 first group to successfully create a chemical bond between the magnetic molecules and the molecular network of a gel giving the magnets their squishy consistency and allowing them to stay magnetic for longer we're targeting medical s Robotics and ingestible capsules where you can use these these organic squishy magnets and then once it's for example in the stomach right we

    00:01:31 can use external magnetic fields to move and track the position of this capsule that then it can either release a drug or to perform some kind of surgery this is a a good way to use these materials to replace the magnetic materials that are toxic in in biological environments while less powerful than traditional magnets the lightweight of the squishy magnet is perfect for adding to a soft

    00:01:55 robot freeing them from tethered controls this can open many Poss posibilities in in the robotic space right but also in in healthare and in sustainability our next plan is to make these things biodegradable right so then you can have this uh uh magnets that can just safely degrade in the body or out in the field right so these are things that you could never do with the

    00:02:19 traditional approach this one we can try we're combining electrochemistry with polymer science with robotics with imaging with biomaterials right and we're pulling from all of these different different fields to create new solutions for a for a real need that it that it's out [Music]

    00:02:45 there