Microscopic Robots for Medicine

Microscopic programmable devices ("nanorobots") are a potential outcome of ongoing developments in bio- and nanotechnologies. When such machines can be built cheaply and in large quantities, they offer a wide range of capabilities that will be especially useful for biomedical applications.

A survey article: T. Hogg, Designing Microscopic Robots for Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, Nanotechnology Perceptions, 3(2):63, 2007

Quantitative evaluation of some medical applications of microscopic robots demonstrates improved speed and accuracy compared to conventional medical technology:

T. Hogg and P. J. Kuekes, Mobile Microscopic Sensors for High-Resolution in vivo Diagnostics, Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology, and Medicine 2:239, 2006
T. Hogg and D. W. Sretavan, Controlling Tiny Multi-Scale Robots for Nerve Repair, Proc. of AAAI2005, pp. 1286-1291, 2005

Evaluating capabilities of microscopic robots operating in fluids at low Reynolds number, which is relevant for in vivo operation:

T. Hogg and R. A. Freitas Jr, Chemical Power for Microscopic Robots in Capillaries, Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology, and Medicine, 2010
T. Hogg, Distributed Control of Multiscale Microscopic Chemical Sensor Networks, J. of Micro-Nano Mechatronics, 4:168, 2008 (this issue of the journal appeared in 2009)
T. Hogg, Coordinating Microscopic Robots in Viscous Fluids, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 14:271, 2007