Engineers discover 'unexpected motion' in drug-delivery robots

One day, tiny swimming robots may travel through the human body to deliver drugs. The medication would target only areas of need—chemotherapy drugs for a tumor, for example—avoiding healthy tissue and minimizing side effects. A research team led by Ebru Demir, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics in Lehigh University's P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, with collaborators On Shun Pak (Santa Clara University) and Roberto Zenit (Brown University), is studying how tiny robots move through bodily fluids. They recently published a paper in the journal Applied Physics Letters detailing new foundational insights.