This Snakelike Robot Slithers Down Your Lungs and Could Spot Cancer (msn.com) 28
"Researchers in the United Kingdom have developed an autonomous, snakelike robot designed to slither down human lungs into places that are difficult for medical professionals to reach," reports the Washington Post.
The tool "could improve the detection and treatment of lung cancer and other pulmonary diseases." In a medical paper released in the journal of Soft Robotics last week, scientists from the University of Leeds unveiled a new "magnetic tentacle robot," which is composed of magnetic discs and is roughly 2 millimeters thick — about double the size of a ballpoint pen tip — and less than a-tenth-of-an-inch long.
In the future, the robot's use could be expanded to help doctors better, and more thoroughly, investigate other organs, such as the human heart, kidney or pancreas, they said....
The robot is still 5 to 10 years away from showing up in a clinical setting, researchers said, but the device comes on the heels of a fleet of other robotic innovations allowing doctors the ability to better scan a patient's lungs for cancerous tissue. They are designed to ease a task doctors have long struggled with: reaching the inner recesses of the human body, for diagnostic and treatment purposes, without causing damage or using invasive procedures.... [I]ts smaller size and magnetic composition would allow it to shape-shift more easily and better navigate the intricate shape of a lung's network of airways, which can look like a tree....
Once at its desired location, the robot could ultimately have the capability to take a tissue sample or deliver a clinical treatment.... Nitish V. Thakor, a professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, said the autonomous robot is "very novel and interesting technology" that could become potentially useful in areas outside the lungs, most notably the heart. The device's autonomous capability is its unique factor, he said, and has the capability to change invasive surgeries. "I can imagine a future," he said, "where a full [cancer-screening] CAT scan is done of the lungs, and the surgeon sits down on a computer and lays out this navigation path of this kind of a snake robot and says: 'Go get it.' "
The tool "could improve the detection and treatment of lung cancer and other pulmonary diseases." In a medical paper released in the journal of Soft Robotics last week, scientists from the University of Leeds unveiled a new "magnetic tentacle robot," which is composed of magnetic discs and is roughly 2 millimeters thick — about double the size of a ballpoint pen tip — and less than a-tenth-of-an-inch long.
In the future, the robot's use could be expanded to help doctors better, and more thoroughly, investigate other organs, such as the human heart, kidney or pancreas, they said....
The robot is still 5 to 10 years away from showing up in a clinical setting, researchers said, but the device comes on the heels of a fleet of other robotic innovations allowing doctors the ability to better scan a patient's lungs for cancerous tissue. They are designed to ease a task doctors have long struggled with: reaching the inner recesses of the human body, for diagnostic and treatment purposes, without causing damage or using invasive procedures.... [I]ts smaller size and magnetic composition would allow it to shape-shift more easily and better navigate the intricate shape of a lung's network of airways, which can look like a tree....
Once at its desired location, the robot could ultimately have the capability to take a tissue sample or deliver a clinical treatment.... Nitish V. Thakor, a professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, said the autonomous robot is "very novel and interesting technology" that could become potentially useful in areas outside the lungs, most notably the heart. The device's autonomous capability is its unique factor, he said, and has the capability to change invasive surgeries. "I can imagine a future," he said, "where a full [cancer-screening] CAT scan is done of the lungs, and the surgeon sits down on a computer and lays out this navigation path of this kind of a snake robot and says: 'Go get it.' "
Imagine (Score:2)
Real life tentacle porn!
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Autonomous? (Score:2)
Why on earth would you want an autonomous surgical robot that is only going to be used under the supervision of a doctor anyway?
>the surgeon sits down on a computer and lays out this navigation path of this kind of a snake robot and says: 'Go get it.' "
So... it's not actually autonomous?
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From the study:
Since the magnetic catheter is designed to shape autonomously to the predetermined path, the surgeon is completely relieved of the cognitive burden of navigation.
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It makes me quite happy that I have now a rather advanced age and will vanish
Good for you.
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Not to worry. The word "autonomous" appears to be utilized in the loosest possible fashion here. It appears to be a pretty dumb device not just guided but magnetically moved by a mass of external machinery along a "predetermined" path. So it doesn't even autonomously determine its path.
It really is too bad. If you truly had something like this that was autonomous, it might end war when weaponized. Who would go to battle under the threat of having a bucket of robotic worms sprinkled from helicopters to bore
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Just like machine guns were supposed to end war? You want to talk a horrifying game changer?
I have no confidence that the invention of increasingly horrific weapons will ever make make war any less appealing - after all the people who profit from war never set foot on the battle field, and dealing with poor troop morale is an ancient military art.
Nuclear (and potentially biological) weapons are the one partial exception - once the losing party can ensure that no one wins, it greatly reduces the appeal of a
Rrr (Score:2)
roughly 2 millimeters thick â" about double the size of a ballpoint pen tip â" and less than a-tenth-of-an-inch long.
PICK A UNIT AND STICK WITH IT
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It's less than 1/43200th of a football field long.
Nope, not my lungs (Score:2)
Re: Nope, not my lungs (Score:5, Insightful)
a)have a guy crack open your chest like an alien movie, go to town on you with a scalpel, and pray his hand doesn’t quiver by more than a millimeter as he tries to remove a tumor that’s wrapped around a major nerve or artery.
b) chemotherapy which put you out of commission for 12-18 months because, aside from all the side effects that youve probably heard about, nobody EVER talks about chemo brain fog, which is totally real and cuts your intelligence down by about 25 iq points.
c) a very creepy but near-microscopic robot worm that can be guided by external magnets, controlled by a computer program, that can sit inside you and slowly nibble away at the tumor.
D) take something homeopathic, trust in the power of prayer, and die quickly.
Its a free country, you can do,what you want, but until we get FAR better anti-cancer drugs, I’d go with option C.
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Didn't we have a story on Slashdot, sometime in the last couple of years, about one of our very own editors (msmash I think) getting a surgical camera stuck inside him for a number of days?
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It was BeauHD: https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
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Good grief, that was in 2018! My sense of time sure has compressed as I've gotten older... or maybe I can blame COVID. Or both.
Anyway, thanks for dredging that up!
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And what if it sheds its skin while it's in there? *shudder*
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Yeah, I can get over the whole creep-factor thing. Death is creepier.
Not much of a snake (Score:2)
Let's see, a tenth of an inch is about 2.5 mm. So this "snake" is 2 mm across and less than 2.5 mm long. How is that a snake?? More like a slightly elongated spheroid.
Something wrong here.
Re: Not much of a snake (Score:2)
From reading the abstract, it seems it is a catheter, so it has 'infinite' length. Only metric here is the width, which is 2mm OR 1/10th of the inch for the metric-impaired.
It is not a self-propelling robot going thought your lungs. It is just a very thin catheter, which is too thin to allow direct articulation, so they are driving it with the help of external magnetic fields.
This sounds familiar (Score:2)
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Also useful for "probing" for colorectal cancer.
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(*sheesh*)
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I for one welcome our new reptilian masters (Score:2)
Sorry, that one's been done already.