i-Snake, a New Robotic Surgeon

Roland Piquepaille noted coverage of the iSnake Robotic Surgeon which is basically a super flexible robot that can travel through blood vessels and repair the heart. Of course the article isn't exactly clear on what happens if they gain control of the city's sewage system and take over.

Re:Article short on details, title misleading.

[palegray.net]

Exactly my point. Folks can also reference this article on endoscopy [wikipedia.org] and related topics for additional information. While there may indeed be innovative research going on in the field, the submitted article is about as newsworthy as an advertisement for a wheel.

Re:Why it is ground breaking.

[Paradise Pete]

What a great post. Much better than the actual article.

What about the blood

[begonia]

Of course, one of the major reasons why endovascular microsurgical technology hasn't caught on yet is all the blood that gets in the way. Hey, it sort of cuts down on visual acuity. If you were to attempt to operate endoscopically on a cardiac valve, you would need to either do things under radiologic control (quite limiting) or under direct vision (such as thru fiberoptics). But you need to move the blood out of the way to be successful and no one has come up with a good way of doing this yet without cardiac bypass.