Employing Cell-Sized Robots in Aerosolizable Electronics and Chemical Detection—Albert Liu—MIT Department of Engineering
Finding Genius Podcast
Richard Jacobs
4.4 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2019
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With the creation of an entirely inorganic robotic system about the size of a red blood cell—just seven to ten microns in diameter—the team in the lab of Michael Strano at the MIT Department of Engineering is reaching previously inaccessible locations in the human body and various other environments found within and useful to industry, such as chemical reactors, oil pipelines, and soil matrices.
In 2018, they published landmark papers detailing two prototypes of these tiny robotic systems, one which was used as a component of aerosolizable electronics in which they were nebulized and sent through a pipe, light enough to travel along with the air flow. The robots were able to detect different chemicals and respond to light within the pipes, and then be gathered for the collection of data. The second prototype was launched into a body of water where it was capable of detecting various chemicals and responding to magnetic fields, and therefore able to detect nutrients in soil matrices that were good or bad for plant growth.
Albert Liu is a presidential fellow and member of Michael Strano's lab at MIT, and he has an extensive laboratory background. He brings a wealth of knowledge to the conversation, explaining the ins and outs of this new technology, the challenges that come along with creating and powering such small systems, and the tradeoffs between artificial and biological systems.
Press play for all the details, and learn more by visiting https://srg.mit.edu/.
Mass producing colloidal electronics (with a video):
http://news.mit.edu/2018/how-mass-produce-cell-sized-robots-1023
Strano website:
Albert website:
Nature Nano reference:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-018-0194-z
Nature Materials reference:
Transcript
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| 0:58.0 | Thank you. Hello this is Richard Jacobs with the Future Check podcast. I have Jarrett Buskovich. |
| 1:09.5 | He is a co-founder of Wow Yow, W-O-W, W-O-W, W-W, W-W, W-W, W-Y-O-W, W-Y-O-W, W-Y-O-W. Wow-Y-O-G.com. And they provided something called Visual A-I, which we'll get into. So, Jared, Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me Richard. Glad to be here. |
| 1:23.0 | So tell me about WIO. |
| 1:24.0 | What's the premise of the company? |
| 1:26.0 | Yeah, well, WIOI would say, like you mentioned, a visual AI company. |
| 1:29.2 | We're in the digital media space and our AI is used to automatically identify index search and |
| 1:37.2 | monetize visual content so this is the native video and images found across web content apps and soon OTT and connected devices. |
... |
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