HeartLander caterpillar robot crawls on heart, administers treatment

We get a little more creeped out each week or so, as a new form of minimally overtly invasive robotic creature somehow comes to life and sets its sights on perusing our innards. The newest species hails from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was designed to "crawl across the surface of the heart to deliver treatment." The eerily-dubbed "robotic caterpillar" measures just a few centimeters in length and can scoot about at a blistering 18-centimeters per minute via "push and pull" control wires that reside outside of the body. The lead doctor on the project suggests that the critter could "allow procedures to be carried out without having to stop the heart, reducing the risk of illness linked to heart bypass surgeries," and moreover, insinuated that patients would spend less time recovering in the hospital after he / she was all sewn up. Apparently, the HeartLander could be available for human practice "within three to four years," but according to a director at the British Heart Foundation, "a lot more research is needed to determine whether something delivered to the outside surface of the heart can modify activity on the inside."

[Via BBC]

[Alex @ Apr 19th 2007 5:36PM]

How long is a metric inch?

[mahdrof @ Apr 24th 2007 6:37AM]

I think the scale in the picture is a dual scale, with the top one being metric (cm and mm), and the bottom one inches. A "metricated inch" is an inch divided into tenths and/or hundredths.

[ethana2 @ Apr 19th 2007 7:39PM]

nice

One day, hopefully American Standard measurement will die along with closed source and the RIAA. Until then, I'll keep asking people "How many meters is that?" and getting weird looks. At least we don't use it with microprocessor stats. New Pentium X! At 1/24 of 1/8 of 1/12 of 1/8 an inch, or something like that, this things breaks integer calc... How long till we hit 1 nm, you think? Back on topic:

This is definitely weird, but I honestly think it will be a different technology that proves vital over the next 10 years. Like the internet. If more elderly people used it, health awareness could be a lot better than it is. And just think if we didn't have to have them on the road trying to get to work on time anymore!

[EWR @ Apr 20th 2007 4:04PM]

Something simply gets me about having a robot crawl around on the surface on my heart, and what it does will determine whether I live or die. I understand that it could be vital to someone's life, but it seems to me that this is not the most comforting way to save it.

[Alex @ Apr 24th 2007 11:56AM]

Yes, I realized that. I was joking. Haha.