Page 464 - Handbook of Biomechatronics

458 Ahmet Fatih Tabak

size to the specialized molecular machines that are programmed to conduct
predefined tasks. However, after more than half a decade since Feynman’s
inspirational lecture “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”(Feynman,
1992), we did end up trying to recruit the single-celled organisms that fabled
to eventually save the humanity from the Martian invasion as brilliantly nar-
rated by Orson Welles (October 1938). The one thing remaining relatively
common to this date is the idea that the microscale robotic agent should be
able to exploit swimming as the method of traveling inside the living tissue.
At the time Feynman talked about the idea, he humbly conveyed as
“Hibbs’ swallowable surgeon” that was supposed to carry out therapeutic appli-
cations inside living organisms eliminating the need for the invasive medi-
cine, he mainly discussed the possible ways to transmit energy to such
systems and how to control them doing so. His suggestions were mainly
focused on exploiting electromagnetic (EM) fields in comparison to the
use of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules by the single-celled organ-
isms (Feynman, 1993). Today, we are still going around the same delicate
issue but with more intense arguments as the problem proved to be far more
complex and interdisciplinary due to the nature of the desired working envi-
ronment for such robotic devices.
The aforementioned systems can also be classified as biomechatronic sys-
tems which are a combination of engineering methods in diverse areas with
organic and inorganic materials actively interacting with each other and with
their surrounding. If these systems are autonomous or semiautonomous, we
would like to call them as biomedical robots. The general definition of
robotics evolved within this micro-robotics context and what is known
as the “end-effector” of the entire robotic system came to be referred as the
robot itself. Furthermore, when biological components, such as living cells,
are introduced as an integral part, these micro-robots can also be referred as
cybernetic microsystems. The terms micro-swimmer and end-effector will
be used interchangeably in this chapter, to emphasize the swimming robot as
a separate entity and to emphasize it as an integral part of a much larger
robotic system, respectively, whenever the context allows doing so.
Robotics and cybernetics will inevitably dominate certain parts of the
global market, industry, military, and medicine as a workforce. Tentative
medical applications are still considered to be highly challenging and ardu-
ous research topics. Conventionally, it is safe to say that we are interfering
with the useful bacteria indirectly and fighting an active war against harm-
ful ones. Another perception has emerged in the last couple of decades.
Scientists are constantly inspired by natural micro-swimmers, and we