UMONS coordinates a European project to develop the medical microrobots of tomorrow
Current medical tools sometimes reach their limits when it comes to accessing narrow and fragile regions of the human body. In these complex environments, existing devices may lack flexibility or pose risks to the surrounding tissues.
It is to address this challenge that the SAM3 project, Soft Active Matter Microrobots for Medicine, proposes to develop microrobots: miniaturised robotic devices that can be precisely controlled at a very small scale. The originality of the project lies in the materials used to design them.
Microrobots designed from smart materials
The researchers will work on soft and active polymers capable of adapting to their environment, reacting to external stimuli and producing controlled movement. In the long term, these properties could make it possible to imagine new approaches to diagnosing or treating certain pathologies in hard-to-reach areas of the human body.
“For microrobots to be able to move through environments as complex as the human body, their design must be rethought starting from the very material they are made of. This is the approach we want to develop with SAM3,” says Jean-Marie Raquez, Head of the Polymer and Composite Materials Department at UMONS.
Training a new generation of researchers
Beyond its scientific ambitions, SAM3 is also a training project. Twelve doctoral candidates will be recruited within the network and will benefit from interdisciplinary supervision combining materials science, microrobotics, engineering and medicine, with direct exposure to the needs of the clinical and industrial worlds.
The award of this project comes in the context of particularly competitive European calls. Its preparation benefited from the support of the UMONS Europe Unit, which assists research teams in preparing projects and building international consortia.
The SAM3 project is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme – Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Networks Action (MSCA-DN). Coordinated by UMONS, the consortium brings together the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), the Laboratorio Europeo di Spettroscopie Non Lineari (LENS, Italy), the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Italy), Université Marie et Louis Pasteur (France), Empa (Switzerland) and the University of Twente (the Netherlands). The network also involves several industrial partners, including start-ups and specialised companies, as well as clinical stakeholders such as the Erasmus Hospital (ULB) and the Besançon Regional University Hospital Centre (CHRU). These partners will notably contribute to the training of the doctoral candidates through secondments and direct interactions with the needs of the medical and industrial worlds.
