Heart Lander a Heart Robot

One of the most promising application areas for robotics and more specifically miniature and nano robotics is in medicine. Whether the tiny robots are specifically designed to deliver medications or directly attack viruses, their usefulness in prolonging our lives and eliminating the pain and suffering of disease is indisputable. I am always happy to read about recent advances in medical robotics that bring us one step closer to such devices. This post is about HeartLander, a miniature medical robot under development at CMU's Robotics Institute; the robot is designed for performing minimally invasive cardiac therapy.

So how does the robot work?

Basically, a surgeon creates a small incision on the patient's chest. Using a pair of forceps, the surgeon places the robot directly on the beating heart. Using a joystick, he can then guide the robot delivering medicine directly to affected areas, helping to attach pacemaker electrodes or even assisting with specialized techniques for curing arrhythmia. The worm-like robot moves using an ingenious mechanism driven by miniature ultrasonic piezoelectric motors.

Although the robot is still a proof of concept, the CMU research team has been able to demonstrate its use on a pig's beating heart (see the video at the end of this post.) The team still has to work out a number of issues such as the development of wireless remote control mechanism in order to eliminate the reliance on a tether whose stiffness causes problems with locomotion. The same tether is used to supply energy to HeartLander although a future production version would most likely utilize an on-board battery. This is an excellent and very promising research project and I am looking forward to the next generation of HeartLander.