Name: What Are These Tiny Robots Doing Inside You?
Uploaded: 2026-02-08T17:15:07.000Z
Duration: 4 min 7 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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This video is sponsored by our friends over at the Foresight Institute.

Imagine a world where if you get sick, doctors inject tiny robots into your body that seek out the source of the problem and cure your illness.

While this technology is still in the developmental stages, scientists have been hard at work making machines small enough to be able to do this.

They are called nanobots and come from the field of nanotechnology.

I have a lot of friends that are nanobots because I can get as small as them.

Some of the things that would go on at these parties, I mean, never mind.

Nanotechnology is any science, engineering or technology that is done at the nanoscale, which is from 1 to 100 nanometers, and

To put that in perspective, a sheet of paper is about 1 million nanometers thick.

A human cell is 10,000 nanometers, a bacterium 1,000 nanometers, and a DNA molecule is 2.5 nanometers.

Plenty of nanoparticles already exist in everyday things like sunscreen, agriculture and electronics.

But they are also used in medicine inside your body.

They are mainly used as a contrast agent in medical imaging techniques, improving their sensitivity and detection abilities, as well as a vehicle for delivering drugs into specific parts parts of the body.

But these particles aren't controlled externally.

They get to the desired location in the body with the help of an attached ligand, which is a molecule that binds to a very specific receptor, like one that is located only on tumor cells.

To be considered a nanorobot or nanobot, they must be able to be externally controlled.

And this is challenging, especially when you want to enter the body, which has a whole host of natural defenses against foreign invaders like, like mucus and immune cells.

One popular propulsion method being explored is the use of a magnetic field.

Since magnetic fields are not influenced by tissues in the body and are considered safe, many scientists are developing tiny robots that can be controlled inside the body when a magnetic field is applied outside of the body.

So far, all of these robots are larger than 100nm, so they can't really be considered a true nan, but

Like the fish shaped microbots being developed to deliver chemotherapy drugs directly to cancer cells, the slope climbing milabots being made to medicate the nervous system.

And a 400 nanometer surgical robot with propellers that can drill through an eye without harming the tissue.

But the smallest One is a 120 nanometer robot that can transport payloads like medicine as well as penetrate cell membranes to deliver it, which most nanoparticles struggle to do.

The creators hope to use it to treat cancer, remove blood clots, and even repair brain cells.

Other potential applications include collecting internal information about the body, correcting bleeding or oxygenation issues, and

There are still many challenges that need to be overcome and risks that need to be addressed before these technologies will make it into the clinic.

But perhaps one day soon, these tiny robots could be saving our lives.

At the very least, they'll get a very weird vacation.

So would you ever have nanobots swimming around like the magic school bus inside your body?

Let me know how you feel about this in the comments.

Thanks so much to our friends at the Foresight Institute who sponsored this video.

To find out more about the work that they do to advance technology for the long term benefit of life, click the link in the description.

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What Are These Tiny Robots Doing Inside You?

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struggle

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