Cars collide on an isolated country road. A passenger is seriously injured. The paramedics arrive and determine he will die without immediate medical attention. Unfortunately, the nearest hospital is 40 miles away. Only one option is left. Robots. As early as two years from now, what seems like a scene from a sci-fi flick might be a reality, and Shane Farritor is working towards that reality.
Farritor, a 
University of Nebraska-Lincoln mechanical engineering associate professor, heads a project developing miniature robots to be used in remote laparoscopic surgeries. [...] Farritor has designed two camera-carrying robots that can be inserted into the abdomen. The cylindrical robots are no longer than three inches and can be pushed into the body through 15-mm-wide holes. “We’re really looking at a family of devices,” Farritor said. The team currently has two models. The first is a pan-and-tilt camera that sits in the abdomen and gives the surgeons greater visibility. The second model also carries a camera, but is mobile and can explore areas typically inaccessible to normal laparoscopic cameras. “We hope to continue making these devices better,” Platt said. “Then we’ll start getting more and more fanciful.”
The devices are advantageous particularly because surgeons can control them by radio. “If there were a car accident in the boondocks, first responders could make an incision, drop a device in, and a surgeon in a hospital somewhere could control it,” Platt said. “They can be used anywhere a surgeon isn’t available and you need someone more highly trained.” Farritor called the concept “telesurgery.” “It’s kind of been a dream for a while, but our robots could make it a reality,” he said. [...]
The devices have been successful in tests on pigs, and Farritor said he sees breakthroughs on the horizon. “We actually used the devices to remove a pig’s gallbladder,” he said. “I could see them being used in humans in about a year or two.” The team has received attention from the BBC and Popular Science, but the medical world has yet to take notice, Farritor said. “We just aren’t ready for that yet,” he said. “We’re still a little more sci-fi than we are serious.”
there's a small but interesting piece on robots in the Economist's look at "The World in 2005" - in particular, it mentions one robot already used for complicated heart surgeries. From the sounds of it, the robot looks a little bit like a "face-hugger" from the Alien movies, except it attaches to the chest. It makes miniscule incisions in between the ribs and uses it's "tentacles" to operate. It supposedly saves a large amount of recovery time (since most heart surgeries involve cracking the chest open).
-iain-
Posted by: Iain Robertson | 25 December 2004 at 02:29 PM