MIT researchers have developed a method to print magnetic structures smaller than a grain of sand, capable of moving with a common magnet and activating specific parts of microscopic objects. The technique promises advances in robotics at a minuscule scale, but the cost and printing speed limit its use outside the laboratory.
Slow printing and expensive short-range magnet 🧲
The 3D printing method uses magnetic fields to shape polymers with ferromagnetic particles. However, manufacturing each structure is a slow and costly process, far from mass production. Additionally, the common magnet only controls the robots at millimeter distances, making any immediate practical application in medicine or real industry unfeasible.
Robots for the rich and pocket spies 🕵️
The news sounds like medicine for everyone, but the reality is that MIT will sell the patent to a company that will use it for military microengineering or luxury drugs. Meanwhile, the citizen who paid taxes for this research will be able to see the results in 20 years, if they can afford the treatment. Or perhaps they are already having their cells spied on by a robot the size of a bacterium.