Tiny robots that can climb slopes, move against the flow of fluids and travel over obstacles could one day deliver drugs to specific areas in the human body. A team of scientists, led by Weinberg Medical Physics in Maryland, have designed soft robots called MANiACs that are controlled by an external magnetic field to deliver medication to exact locations. Findings, published in Frontiers in Robotics and Ai, show how the MANiACs (magnetically aligned nanorods in alginate capsules) could perform as drug delivery vehicles inside parts of the human body that are hard to reach by oral or intravenous medication. This is the first study to test how microrobots perform in the central nervous system (CNS). The MANiACs' technology is reminiscent of the premise in the 1966 sci-fi film'Fantastic Voyage,' in which a group of scientists shrink a submarine and themselves to travel inside a patient's brain.