

Self-assembling micro-robots created, Judgment Day looms - ukdm
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/92244-self-assembling-micro-robots-created-judgment-day-looms

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JunkDNA
"In the short term, these micro-robots could be used to deliver cancer drugs
(or any kind of medication) in a highly-targeted fashion, rather than the
carpet bombing approach that is currently used"

You can almost always find the cancer therapy tie-in with these kinds of
things. In this case "near term" would be 15-20 years at best. Getting stuff
inside of cells without the immune system going caveman on your nanobot along
the way is a _hard_ problem.

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Symmetry
Inside cells? That certainly is way off - but things like getting chemotherapy
drugs mostly to the organ or body part that is cancerous should be much
easier.

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mrsebastian
Yeah, similar tech was demonstrated earlier this year I think -- little balls
that carried anti-cancer drugs to tumors in mice. I think they were controlled
with magnets.

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JunkDNA
Yep, we've cured cancer in mice several times over. Humans are the hard part.

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gjm11
They aren't self-assembling, they aren't robots, and Judgment Day does not
appear to be looming. Other than that, great headline.

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Tichy
Doesn't sound like self-assembly to me - isn't that simply some magnetic
particles sticking to a magnet (or as close to the magnet as possible)? Too
bad the videos don't show the magnets involved.

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inportb
Then, what is self-assembly to you?

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sp332
We were expecting robots that could assemble _copies_ of themselves, not just
robots that could only assemble _themselves_.

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JabavuAdams
We've figured out how to move some iron in a 2D plane, using magnetic fields
normal to the plane.

...

Cancer therapy (3D, in vivo, ...)!

WTF.

