498 words · auto-generated from the episode video
42:25running around that can independently sense and respond to their surroundings independently. H and operate for months and cost just a penny each. Not going to take off in the US. >> No way. We don't got pennies anymore. >> We don't even have you got to buy in bulk. [laughter] No, >> but okay. Uh all jokes aside, this is pretty crazy. Okay, you saw the photo, right? These these things are smaller than a grain of salt. They're powered by light and they've got a little computer that can let it move in sophisticated ways. This thing is this thing is insane. And they operate at the biological level. So, you know, they say you can monitor individual cells. You can have it go inside your body. Um, you
43:07can help with smallcale manufacturing. Like imagine a a laboratory that's the size of like, you know, microns by microns. I think it's definitely uh look it's it's a cool technological advance but all those people who are like there's a chip in my body like >> this is a this is weird it's a little bit weird >> now there's some experimental research >> yeah now there yeah and and they operate you know with just light >> meaning >> so they've got little tiny solar panels and then they've got a computer that lets them figure out where they want to go and things like that. Um, one thing that I thought was really cool is how do you how do you make something that small move around in water? Okay, because you run into the low Reynolds numbers,
43:50right? The Navier Stokes equations when you go down to that scale, water is basically like honey >> and so it's really hard to move around. So, how are they actually doing it? Well, if you have movable parts, like little flippers and stuff, one, that's a really inefficient way to move around in Honey because like as I move this way and then I retract my flippers, I'm actually going to go backwards. Um, the other thing is movable parts are really bad because they're not durable. They can break, especially if you're moving around in honey. >> There's no nanob nano robotic autozone. >> Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. And these things are lasting for months on end, right? The way they do it is they generate electric fields around their chip and then the electric fields then move around ions because our body has a
44:32bunch of ions and then that moves around water which propels propels them forward. So there's no moving parts. >> I just am so mad at how clever that is. >> That it's pretty clever. I got to say it's a >> bit weird that that's what we're going for but at the end it it is pretty clever and I think for the right use cases it can be huge right for delivering let's say medical cargo for