HeartLander: Carnegie Mellon's Heart Walker

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Engineers from Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute have created a tiny medical robot that can crawl across the surface of the heart to deliver therapy in a procedure that is much less invasive than current methods. HeartLander is inserted via two small incisions in the skin and the pericardium (sac that encloses the heart). Once inserted, the 0.8" (2cm) long robot attaches itself onto the heart surface and is then driven around using a joystick, its position tracked on a graphical interface using a tiny embedded tracking sensor called microBIRD. The robot can also navigate to a specified target automatically. The robot is made of two tethered segments with vacuum lines and wires running through the tether. The vacuum lines allow the robot to adhere to the heart surface using suction. The wires are driven using external linear motors. The video shows the robot moving across a latex balloon.

The roboticists have already shown the robot's ability to navigate across a pig's heart. Using only a small incision, surgeons will be able to attach pacemaker leads to the heart or deliver drugs to specific parts of the organ. With current methods, surgeons need to open up a patient's chest to attach pacemaker leads to the outer heart surface (reference.