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Surgical Microbot Developed

Posted by Zonk on Fri Jan 19, 2007 09:24 AM
from the fantastic-voyage dept.
Robotics Science
An anonymous reader writes to mention a Wired article about the first surgical nanobot developed for practical use. No wider that two human hairs, the machine is intended to swim through arteries and the digestive tract, and can perform surgical procedures in spaces no bigger than 250 microns. The article also addresses safety concerns; the bot will swim upstream from blood flow, so if something goes wrong it can be retrieved on its way back. Likewise, for the most delicate procedures it can be fitted with a tether, to ensure it doesn't get lost. From the article: "The tiny robot, small enough to pass through the heart and other organs, will be inserted using a syringe. Guided by remote control, it will swim to a site within the body to perform a series of tasks, then return to the point of entry where it can be extracted, again by syringe. For example, the microrobot might deliver a payload of expandable glue to the site of a damaged cranial artery -- a procedure typically fraught with risk because posterior human brain arteries lay behind a complicated set of bends at the base of the skull beyond the reach of all but the most flexible catheters."
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  • welcome (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2007, @09:27AM (#17680288)
    I for one welcome our surgical microbot overlords.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      While some people may be getting tired of these 'overlords' jokes, I, for one, welcome our 'overlords' joke-making overlords.
  • . . .so now they're going to take over my body from within?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by TheMadcapZ (868196)
      The bad part of this robot is if the tether snaps, or loses power and ends up in the brain. Stroke and lawsuit city!!!!

      • Re:great. . . (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jdray (645332) on Friday January 19 2007, @09:48AM (#17680580) Homepage Journal

        I was wondering about that myself. Any ideas on how to guard against that?

        Realistically, any sort of circulatory system surgery has the potential to knock loose a piece of plaque that can end up in your brain, and this beats the heck out of having a medical snake run up one of your arteries (a friend of mine had heart surgery; they went in through her thigh in a one-inch incision).

        Also, on a tether, you could feed the thing power so it could do longer, more complex surgeries.

        • Also, on a tether, you could feed the thing power so it could do longer, more complex surgeries.


          I think that wireless power would be the source of choice for an internally operating surgical robot.

      • Re:great. . . (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Daemonstar (84116) on Friday January 19 2007, @10:04AM (#17680818)
        Ya, possibly, but there's no more risk than having your body cut open and worked on by people. Surgery is surgery. :)

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by jahudabudy (714731)
        I'm not a doctor, and have no official medical training. But I believe the blood brain barrier [wikipedia.org] tends to prevent this sort of thing. Also, TFA doesn't mention the composition of the bot, but it could theoretically be built using materials that eventually breakdown in the body, further reducing this risk.
        • I'm also not a doctor, so perhaps I should wait for someone more informed to respond, but I'm pretty sure that the blood brain barrier prevents molecule-sized particles from crossing from the bloodstream into the brain. So it might be effective against tiny toxic molecules, but not against a largish chunk of plaque or micro-bot.

          The concern is that the bot will clog up a blood vessel, stopping or severely limiting blood flow to an area of the brain. Unfortunately, it would only take a very short time for

            • Re:great. . . (Score:4, Informative)

              by TheMeuge (645043) on Friday January 19 2007, @11:31AM (#17682180) Homepage
              I do have medical training, so let me explain:

              The blood-brain barrier has to do with the tighter junctions between the cells that form blood vessel walls, which prevents diffusion of most larger molecules into the brain, and prevents migration of cells into the brain. This is how the brain becomes an immunologically-priviledged site.

              The blood-brain barrier does not affect the LUMEN of the blood vessels - only their LINING. Thus, it does not have any role in filtering particles within the bloodstream itself. So it cannot prevent an object from being stuck in a small artery or arteriole, obstructing blood flow and causing a stroke.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Thansal (999464)
        The bad part of this robot is if the tether snaps, or loses power and ends up in the brain. Stroke and lawsuit city!!!!

        the bot will swim upstream from blood flow, so if something goes wrong it can be retrieved on its way back

        I tihnk the idea is that if somethign does fug up it simply will wash back to the point of origin because it will flow WITH the blood. Think of putting a motor boat in a swiftly flowing river, have it putter up stream, then cut the engines and watch as it comes back.
      • They cover that in TFA. The make it swim upstream against the bloodflow, so if it loses power it drifts back to the original entry point for extraction.
        Even the most sophisticated motor can break down, and then what?

        "It is indeed something we're concerned about," Friend said. That's why the scientists plan to swim the robot against the current of the blood, so if it loses power it will return to the point of entry."

        Or they could really Fantastic Voyage it and have it go for the tear ducts in the eye
  • Summary: Developed TFA: Developing
    • mod parent up.
      C'mon, editor dudes, spreading lies can be the fact of laziness, this is just dishonest summarization
  • Just keep Donald Pleasence away from the controls.

  • While this is super mega-awesome (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TinBromide (921574) on Friday January 19 2007, @09:33AM (#17680362)
    Isn't this too big to be a nanobot?

    Anywho, i wonder if they'll hook this sucker up to a joystick for real time control, anyone played ballistics? Like that only instead of breaking the speed of sound, you try not to cripple someone for life, for real!!!

    I give it 2 thumbs up... 2 thumbs... well, one thumb and a hand twich...
    • No, this isn't too big to be a bot made with nanotechnology (a 'nanobot') and dealing with things at a nanometer scale. You could have something like that the size of a human, a jet plane, a city, etc. It is, however, too clunky to be a nanobot. Nanotechnology deals with something being built with precision at the nanometer scale... each atom in proper place.

      Take, for a boring but perfectly valid example, steel. Normally you would melt things down and mold it or bang it into shape. Microscopic cracks and bu
  • Can you really call something a nanobot if it is 250 microns wide? Seems like this 'nanobot' is a few orders of magnitude too large(Wikipedia says nanobots [wikipedia.org] are typically devices ranging in size from 0.1-10 micrometres).
    • 250 microns? That's a huge amount of space for the nanobot to work in! You can't even get readings that far away on DRADIS.

      Oh wait, this is not in Caprican units? Nevermind.

  • some perl (Score:5, Funny)

    by Trailer Trash (60756) on Friday January 19 2007, @09:34AM (#17680380) Homepage
    use Jokes::Std::Beowulf;
    use Jokes::Std::Overlords::Robotic;

  • That's optimism! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lazerf4rt (969888) on Friday January 19 2007, @09:35AM (#17680386)

    The article:

    An international team of scientists is developing what they say will be the world's first microrobot... While others have tried and failed to create microrobots for arterial travel, Friend believes his team will succeed...

    The Slashdot headline:

    Surgical Microbot Developed.

    • Re:That's optimism! (Score:4, Funny)

      by niconorsk (787297) on Friday January 19 2007, @09:39AM (#17680428)
      You mean Slashdot articles are sometimes inaccurate and sensationalist. Quickly, inject me with some nanobots to calm my central nervous system before I go into paralyzing shock.
    • If it would have existed, that would be amazing.. How on earth are they going to power the thing? It's nice to make it small, but to let it swim up against the bloodstream I don't think a 'nanobattery' will do. And then we're not yet talking about transmitting images!

      I'd love to be proven wrong, but my engineering gut feeling tells me it cannot be done.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by oliverthered (187439)
      Is it me of have /. headlines been getting very dubious lately. Just take 'Bill to Treat Bloggers as Lobbyists Defeated' as an example of a dubious headline for today (there have been many more this week).

  • Old news (Score:3, Funny)

    by UbuntuDupe (970646) * on Friday January 19 2007, @09:36AM (#17680402) Journal
    Nanomachines have already been used to perform surgery. For example, Dr. Victor Niguel developed them to attack the Pempti strain in 2018.

  • The new bit (Score:5, Informative)

    by Silver Sloth (770927) on Friday January 19 2007, @09:40AM (#17680460)
    Once you separate the wheat from the chaff in TFA the new tech is

    The microrobot's design is based on the E. coli bacterium, complete with flagella that will propel it through the body. Scientists will make the flagella out of human hair in the preliminary research stages, and eventually they want to try using Kevlar.

    The theory behind the microrobot's propulsion system is modeled after turbine and helicopter blades, Friend said.

    "In and of itself, the idea is not especially new, but it has always fallen down around the propulsion system," he said.
    So, at the end of the day, what we have is another step towards a working microbot, not the finished product.
  • ...that you think will never actually happen, but it does. While the ones that seem possible don't (flying cars, etc.).
    • While the ones that seem possible don't (flying cars, etc.).

      Technological progress is funny like that. If you traveled back and time and tried to explain the internet, laptops, or cell phones to people in the 1950s they would most likely shrug and say "Who would use a thing like that!"

      That and futurists often concoct ideas without thinking of social ramifications.

      Imagine the accident and death toll related to flying cars and drunk driving for example.
      • "Imagine the accident and death toll related to flying cars and drunk driving for example."

        I would actually imagine it would be less, due to having thousands of times more area to "drive" in than being confined to lanes and roads. Besides, they never had any problems on the Jetsons...


        And calculate in that by the time flying cars are prevalent, alcohol will be long gone and we will all be enjoying Spice...

  • Neuroendovascular surgery (Score:3, Interesting)

    by daigu (111684) on Friday January 19 2007, @09:43AM (#17680508) Journal
    For example, the microrobot might deliver a payload of expandable glue to the site of a damaged cranial artery -- a procedure typically fraught with risk because posterior human brain arteries lay behind a complicated set of bends at the base of the skull beyond the reach of all but the most flexible catheters.

    Getting beyond the "bends at the base of the skull" through the arteries is a surgical field called Neuroendovascular Surgery that has been in development since the 1960s [ajnr.org] and is used on everyone from babies [post-gazette.com] to the old to people with cocaine habits and so forth. If I had an illiness that required it, I'd take a surgeon who performs several hundred of these operations a year over a remote controlled robot.

    • Re:Neuroendovascular surgery (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gbjbaanb (229885) on Friday January 19 2007, @10:20AM (#17681074)
      However, once the robot is proven, the surgeon who *used* to perform hundreds of these operations, now performs twice as many but uses a fancy remote controller instead of his old wiggly catheter.

      Once upon a time, these operations would be performed using a bit of sharp flint after a song and dance round the fire while stoned out of your head on mushroom juice. Things move on, don't worry about them.

  • Now to only get a tiny human to pilot the robot ship like Innerspace...
  • Here is yet another science fiction creation that is on its way to being real. In another couple of years, reading science fiction (on a flexible screen PDA) will be the guide for how stock traders invest.

  • Fantastic Voyage! (Score:3, Funny)

    by your_mother_sews_soc (528221) on Friday January 19 2007, @09:57AM (#17680714)
    Thirty years or so ago I loved the idea of having Raquel Welch swimming around in my body. Have you seen her lately? She's probably the reason I need my arteries un-clogged in the first place.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by dpilot (134227)
      No, I haven't seen here lately. Do you realize that most /.ers are probably to young to even know who she is, let alone remember her?
    • Thirty years or so ago I loved the idea of having Raquel Welch swimming around in my body.


      You were pretty forward thinking I guess.

      Presumably, most people get excited about the inverse scenario.
    • She's probably the reason I need my arteries un-clogged in the first place.

      you dolt! that's not what I meant by 'eating a girl'.
  • Does anyone remember a computer game from the 1980s where you'd pilot a probe through a human body, zapping bacteria and plaques with a laser, dispensing drugs for various emergent conditions, and eventually traveling to the brain to destroy a tumor? I can't remember the name of it.

    I played that game for hours when I was a kid. My wife is a doctor and she's surprised when I can whip out some medical vocabulary that I learned from that game.
  • the bot will swim upstream from blood flow,

    That must take some mighty swimming prowess for something so small. Like me swimming up against Niagara Falls.

  • BSOD... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dbatkins (958906)
    Takes on a whole new meaning when your nanobot craps out.
  • 'expect to have a prototype by..." does NOT equal "...have developed..." which implies a working nano-sized tool.

    This is almost as good as politicians standing up for election spouting all their "projects" they plan to implement with our dollars once we elect them to be our overlords.
  • Reminds of the science fiction short story "Deep Safari" by Charles Sheffield (originally printed in Asimov's [amazon.com], reprinted along with Georgia On My Mind [amazon.com]), about adventure and romance in a virtual reality controlled nanobot stuck in the brain. At really small scales, quantum effects and the body's own Electromagnetic interference can screw things up.
  • (shameless plug) My book, Cyberchild [smartalix.com], is about medical microbots being developed for brain computing systems getting out of the lab and causing interesting things to happen in the outside world. (/shameless plug).
    • it sounds like a patent application is in order. Everything lines up - no working model, no practical experience, no real plan to market - yup, I'd say that's a patent in the making. Who cares if it takes someone else another decade to get it done, that leaves 17 years of extortion.

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