{"id":221588,"date":"2025-09-09T03:48:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T08:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/scientists-harness-the-power-of-collapsing-bubbles-to-propel-tiny-robots"},"modified":"2025-09-09T03:48:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T08:48:33","slug":"scientists-harness-the-power-of-collapsing-bubbles-to-propel-tiny-robots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/scientists-harness-the-power-of-collapsing-bubbles-to-propel-tiny-robots","title":{"rendered":"Scientists harness the power of collapsing bubbles to propel tiny robots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-harness-the-power-of-collapsing-bubbles-to-propel-tiny-robots.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A team of scientists from China and the U.S. is pioneering the development of bubble-powered robots, which could one day replace needles for painless drug delivery into the body. Inspired by nature, the researchers developed a new technique that harnesses the energy released by a collapsing bubble in a liquid, a process known as cavitation.<\/p>\n<p>The natural world has evolved ingenious ways to exploit cavitation for movement. For example, ferns use it within specialized cells in their sporangia to catapult spores, and mantis shrimps snap their appendages with such force that the resulting bubbles collapse with enough energy to stun their prey.<\/p>\n<p>In their study, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.adu8943\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal <i>Science<\/i>, the team details how they used cavitation as a propulsion system for <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/tiny+robots\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">tiny robots<\/a>. They built millimeter-sized robots, called \u201cjumpers,\u201d out of <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/titanium+dioxide\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">titanium dioxide<\/a>, polypyrrole and titanium carbide that heated up quickly when hit by a laser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team of scientists from China and the U.S. is pioneering the development of bubble-powered robots, which could one day replace needles for painless drug delivery into the body. Inspired by nature, the researchers developed a new technique that harnesses the energy released by a collapsing bubble in a liquid, a process known as cavitation. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}