Microscopic Robot for Surgery
Microscopic Robot Heads for Surgery
By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News
A new microscopic robot that is so small it can be injected into the body through a syringe could one day be used by doctors to analyze medical conditions, deliver drugs or perform minimally invasive surgery.
The biomedical micro-robotic system, developed by a team of scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, is the smallest of its kind with machined and assembled parts, and has been demonstrated to successfully maneuver through a watery maze using external energy from magnetic forces.
"The application we're actively considering is eye surgery in which these devices are guided inside the eye toward the retina by a surgeon to inject drugs in retinal veins that are about the size of a human hair," said team leader Brad Nelson, professor of robotics and intelligent systems.
Barely a speck of a robot, the smallest devices Nelson and his team have built are about four hair-widths long and are made up of several components.
The mechanical and electrical parts are cut and etched from pieces of nickel and assembled using methods similar to those used to design and make computer chips.
this robot's power comes from an external magnetic field generated by a machine.
For example, tuning to a 2 kilohertz frequency could vibrate a motor that extends a small syringe into a blood vessel. Tuning to 3 kilohertz could drive a pump that delivers drugs into the vessel.
In lab experiments, the team successfully steered the micro-robot backward and forward through a water-filled maze that has channels about as wide as 10 human hairs and as deep as three hairs.
Discovery Channel :: News :: Microscopic Robot Heading for Surgery
By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News
A new microscopic robot that is so small it can be injected into the body through a syringe could one day be used by doctors to analyze medical conditions, deliver drugs or perform minimally invasive surgery.
The biomedical micro-robotic system, developed by a team of scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, is the smallest of its kind with machined and assembled parts, and has been demonstrated to successfully maneuver through a watery maze using external energy from magnetic forces.
"The application we're actively considering is eye surgery in which these devices are guided inside the eye toward the retina by a surgeon to inject drugs in retinal veins that are about the size of a human hair," said team leader Brad Nelson, professor of robotics and intelligent systems.
Barely a speck of a robot, the smallest devices Nelson and his team have built are about four hair-widths long and are made up of several components.
The mechanical and electrical parts are cut and etched from pieces of nickel and assembled using methods similar to those used to design and make computer chips.
this robot's power comes from an external magnetic field generated by a machine.
For example, tuning to a 2 kilohertz frequency could vibrate a motor that extends a small syringe into a blood vessel. Tuning to 3 kilohertz could drive a pump that delivers drugs into the vessel.
In lab experiments, the team successfully steered the micro-robot backward and forward through a water-filled maze that has channels about as wide as 10 human hairs and as deep as three hairs.
Discovery Channel :: News :: Microscopic Robot Heading for Surgery
posted by Prospector at
10:18 AM
1 Comments:
Wow that was amazing and a very big help on the field of research and medicine..
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