This mini-robot, the size of a grain of rice, could revolutionize the treatment of brain diseases

The Robeauté laboratory has developed a robot capable of navigating the brain to treat neurological diseases.

This intervention will be less invasive than current techniques.

It could be tested on humans within two years.

Technology in the service of medicine. Neurological diseases can be treated by a tiny robot that can navigate our brains. This is an innovation developed by the French laboratory Robeauté, which can be used for stroke victims, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or brain cancer patients.

The mini-robot is 1.8 millimeters in diameter, barely larger than a grain of rice. Each of its components has been miniaturized. “There’s a propulsion system that makes it possible to move the robot forward, a navigation system that allows it to orient itself along a path, to make turns. There’s also a tracking system, which makes it possible to position the robot ‘inside’ makes up the brain’Details Lucas Chelivoy, a mechanical engineer, controls a small object with a video game controller.

Minimally invasive surgery

“The micro-robot will go to treatment sites, deposit drugs, bring electrodes, type of treatment tailored to the pathology”, promises co-founder of the laboratory Bertrand Duplat in the report at the top of the article. Interventions will be less invasive in this way: “Instead of imagining a straight-line path to reach a deep zone that can be dangerous because it crosses a dangerous, functional zone, we can imagine a micro-robot that bypasses the dangerous zone”Neurosurgeon Arthur Andre explains.

• Also read

  A team of researchers has created the largest ever map of the human brain

The robot will also be able to collect real-time data from inside the brain, and thus help research against neurological diseases, which affect one in eight people in the world.

The discovery is currently being tested on animals, and should be applied to humans for the first time in two years.