Advances in motor technology, until recently, had not kept up the pace with electronics design. However, there has been a push for robotics technology over the past few years especially for use within the human body. Traditional electric motors do not scale well when reduced to tiny sizes mere millimiters in dimension due to loss.
The real innovators of medical robots and mechanical surgery are simple bacteria. As a result of eons of evolutionary grind, little structures called flagella, and other devices they have developed have given us humans the tools necessary to bring about large scale reductions in piezoelectric motors. The gains, or loses in size recently achieved have been well over 50% reductions in overall size. In addition to size factors, weight or mass also has a direct effect on the overal friction forces exerted upon the tiny moving parts.
At the turn of this century, or slightly after around 2001, the smallest of these ultrasonic, piezoelectric motors developed by researchers at Penn State’s Materials Research Institute were about the size of a single grain of rice. That was 1.8 millimeters in diameter and 4 millimeters long. These standards pale in comparison to what today’s technology can do, however, they were small but powerful motors. The smaller of these motors could be stopped in their tracks with the slightest pressure of a human touch, yet those only fractionally larger could also rip through skin causing blood to flow.
Mapping out the human body may be quite a lofty goal, but a recent article reported the smallest motors demonstrated are only twice the size of a strand of human hair. These miniature motors could be used to power microbots to fly around the body performing feats of surgery only dreamed of with conventional medical technology. Researchers wished for trends of miniaturisation that might lead to medical science robots that can sort out the complications within our bodies. Bringing this technology to the masses would be a huge medical leap forward.
There are still pitfalls to overcome. Piezoelectric materials warp as an electrical voltage is applied to them. Efficiency levels are still miserable at this level of size also, similar in ranges to that of internal combustion engines found in regular gasoline burning vehicles.
The widespread increase of minimally invasive surgery across niche areas of medical practices has driven the need for micro-sized tools to perform procedures man is restricted from ever being capable of alone. Popularity of electronics like iPod’s and other small devices has also increased fixed constraints on device design. Motor designers have faced the ubiquitous medical device design challenge of shrinking the motor’s physical layout while maintaining functionality, power, and efficiency levels.
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