Almost four decades ago an interesting sci-fi flick, Fantastic Voyage, captured the hearts of millions who dared to fantasize about avant-garde life-saving technologies. The movie depicted a submarine, housing a group of doctors, injected into the body of a character. This med-sub sailed through the blood stream to tackle the clot in the brain. That was a movie but today, such a vision has taken shape in form of a motorized robot that is small enough to be injected into the human bloodstream. Researchers from the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory at Australia's Monash University have put the final touches to the design of micro-motors. They have harnessed piezoelectricity, the energy force most commonly used to trigger-start a gas stove, to produce microbot motors just 250 micrometres, a quarter of a millimetre, wide.

Controlled by an external remote control, the robot can make headway against the bloodstream, at least in blood vessels where the flow is not too great. Ideal for stroke and cardiac victims, the device is intended to transmit images, deliver microscopic payloads and if possible carry out surgery. Once the required task is accomplished, this robotic motor can be retrieved by syringe at the point of entry. Christened as Proteus, the same name as the miniature sub in the movie, this device needs to undergo many trials before it can be actually injected in human body.

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