Smart artificial microswimmers, or tiny robots modeled after microorganisms, are showing some serious promise for applications such as targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, and fertility treatments.

However, the microswimmers need to work as a team to accomplish such tasks. Additionally, researchers are unclear on how the artificial microorganisms navigate the complex chemical and mechanical conditions within the body’s fluids.

“We know that whenever a swimmer has a neighbor, it swims differently,” said Ebru Demir, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics at Lehigh University. “Birds fly in a V formation because it’s more efficient and it saves them energy. But for a group of microswimmers, we don’t know what the best formation looks like.”

Deploying Artificial Swimmers

Demir secured major funding for research into the integration of AI machine learning and artificial microswimmers to create Smart Artificial Microswimmers (SAMs). Her project embeds AI into micro-robotic swimmers and analyzes their movements against simulation predictions to better understand the physics of their motion in complex fluids.

“These swimmers will each contain an AI brain that will give them decision-making capabilities, so they can determine for themselves how to swim better alone and how to swim better with three or five or 10 companions,” Demir said. “It will also be interesting to see if their behavior changes if they are allowed to cooperate and share information.”

Ultimately, the long-term goal is to insert micron-sized artificial swimmers into the body, where they can travel through the veins to deliver care. For example, the artificial swimmers could be used to deliver chemotherapy or maybe even break up a patient’s blood clot. The size of the artificial swimmers could change to centimeters if they need to be deployed in larger passages, such as the gastrointestinal tract.

Another potential use, says Demir, is to assist otherwise normal, high-quality human sperm infertility treatments.

“In those cases, the sperm has good genetics, but maybe its tail is compromised, and so the swimmers could push the sperm toward the egg,” she says. “And that has been demonstrated by other researchers to work in a lab environment.”