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Creators/Authors contains: "Gava, Cristina"

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  1. Deploying nanoscopic particles and robots in the human body promises increasingly selective drug delivery with fewer side effects. We consider the problem of a homogeneous swarm of nanobots locating a singular cancerous region and treating it by releasing some onboard payload of drugs once at the site. At nanoscale, the computation, communication, sensing, and locomotion capabilities of individual agents are extremely limited, noisy, and/or nonexistent. We present a general model to formally describe the individual and collective behaviour of agents in a colloidal environment, such as the bloodstream, for the problem of cancer detection and treatment by nanobots. This includes a feasible and precise model of agent locomotion, which is inspired by actual nanoscopic vesicles which, when in the presence of an external chemical gradient, tend towards areas of higher concentration by means of self-propulsion. The delivered payloads have a dual purpose of treating the cancer, as well as diffusing throughout the space to form a chemical gradient which other agents can sense and noisily ascend. We present simulation results to analyze the behavior of individual agents under our locomotion model and to investigate the efficacy of this collectively amplified chemical signal in helping the larger swarm efficiently locate the cancer site. 
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