Engineers from Drexel University have devised a bacteria-powered microrobot that can be steered through fluids with applied electric fields. Imagine a tiny, tiny robotic system covered over by even tinier biomolecular arms (flagella) working cooperatively as a "bacterial surface" to move the biobot from place to place, and then, just as importantly, imagine an algorithm that can steer the thing. The group's work is described in the current IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

The bacteria-powered microrobot (BPM) idea is in itself not new. Researchers are chasing after the technology from many different angles, while biomedical engineers from the same Drexel lab had demonstrated an earlier version of this same concept in 2014, albeit in a much simpler environment.

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