By integrating organic parts achieved through evolution and inorganic parts developed by human civilisation, the cyborg microrobot is rising by taking advantage of the high flexibility, outstanding energy efficiency, extremely exquisite structure in the natural components and the fine upgradability, nice controllability in the artefact parts. Compared to the purely synthetic microrobots, the cyborg microrobots, due to the exceptional biocompatibility and biodegradability, have already been utilised in in situ diagnosis, precise therapy and other biomedical applications. In this review, through a thorough summary of recent advances of cyborg microrobots, the authors categorise the cyborg microrobots into four major classes according to the configuration between biomaterials and artefact materials, i.e. microrobots integrated inside living cell, microrobots modified with biological debris, microrobots integrated with single cell and microrobots incorporated with multiple cells. Cyborg microrobots with the four types of configurations are introduced and summarised with the combination approaches, actuation mechanisms, applications and challenges one by one. Moreover, they conduct a comparison among the four different cyborg microrobots to guide the actuation force promotion, locomotion control refinement and future applications. Finally, conclusions and future outlook of the development and potential applications of the cyborg microrobots are discussed.

This research is published on IET Nanobiotechnoloy: Wei FN,Yin C,Zheng JH,et al. Rise of cyborg microrobot: Different story for different configuration[J]. IET Nanobiotechnology,2019,13(7):651-664.