Swimming microbots mimic bacterial motion for precision tasks

Swimming micromachines, capable of self-assembling to perform a specific task and then disassembling once that task has been completed, have been the subject of a significant amount of research worldwide.

However, it has so far proven difficult to control individual microbots effectively when they are operating within a large group or swarm, meaning they cannot yet be used for precision tasks such as drug delivery or in microfluidics applications.

To tackle this problem, Dr Tom Montenegro-Johnson, a mathematical biologist at Birmingham University, looked at the way certain bacteria such as E.coli change their shape in order to propel themselves through their environment.

“These bacteria swim by a run-tumble method,” said Montenegro-Johnson. “This means they have a ballistic trajectory for a certain amount of time called a run, where they swim in a straight line, and then they unbundle all of their flagella, and this causes a random re-orientation, and then they swim in a straight line again,” he said.