ABSTRACT
Flagellated bacteria can be used as stand-alone entities acting as
natural microrobots under the control of an external computer or as
biological components assembled with synthetic parts to construct
hybrid microscale robots. The use of flagellated bacteria can provide
a viable solution for the implementation of three fundamental
functions thatmust be embedded in an untetheredmicroscale robot.
These three functions, being the mechanical power source, the
propulsion system, and the steering system, have been real technical
challenges for the conception of artificial microrobots. Here, the
molecular motors with the flagella can be exploited as an embedded
source of propulsion. Furthermore, the chain of membrane-based
nanoparticles referred to as magnetosomes can also be exploited
as an embedded steering system to control the directional motion
of certain types of flagellated bacteria using computer-based
magnetotaxis control. These are only two examples of what can
be exploited to implement what could be referred to as bacterial
microrobots. In this chapter, not a single bacterial microrobot but a
swarm of such bacterial microrobots is addressed. Indeed, a swarm
of such bacterial microrobots can perform many tasks that a single
microrobot could not. Two applications with experimental data are
used here to show the powerful concept of performing collective
tasks using a swarm of such bacterial microrobots. In the first
application, the advantages and fundamental techniques of using a
swarm of bacterial microrobots in the human microvasculature for
the delivery of therapeutic agent to tumoral lesions are described.
In the second application, it is shown how a swarm of bacterial
microrobots being coordinated by an external computer can be
used to assemble in a collective effort, one microcomponent at a
time, for the construction of relatively complexmicrostructures. The
objective of this chapter is therefore to demonstrate that the use of
swarms of bacterial microrobots would enable new applications by
providing a solution to some of the most fundamental challenges
created by a lack of technologies in the development of swarms
made of artificially made microrobots.
