biomedical

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Engineers from Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute have created a tiny medical robot that can crawl across the surface of the heart to deliver therapy in a procedure that is much less invasive than current methods. HeartLander is inserted via two small incisions in the skin and the pericardium (sac that encloses the heart). Once inserted, the 0.8" (2cm) long robot attaches itself onto the heart surface and is then driven around using a joystick, its position tracked on a graphical interface using a tiny embedded tracking sensor called microBIRD. The robot can also navigate to a specified target automatically. The robot is made of two tethered segments with vacuum lines and wires running through the tether. The vacuum lines allow the robot to adhere to the heart surface using suction. The wires are driven using external linear ... continued

We've seen some great examples of biomimetics before. Now, driven by the goal of having tiny robots zip around our bodies carrying out tasks such as delivering drugs, biomimetics is moving to the micro and nanoscale. Researchers from the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems (Zurich, Switzerland) have been inspired by the way bacteria move around using helical structures called flagella. Professor Nelson and PhD student Dominik Bell have developed a nanocoil that can be driven at 60rpm to potentially propel a microbot to a speed of about 5 microns per second (approximately one human hair-width in about 5 seconds). This may not be Top Gear-worthy speed but it's a great effort to find ways of driving the microbots and nanobots of the future.