Mini-Robot Crawls Over Beating Heart

The HeartLander, developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) is 20 mm long and resembles two nose-shaped end-pieces (that serve as "feet” with tiny sucker holes) joined by a short tube that continues through one of the end-pieces to emerge eventually outside of the body. A vacuum created through the tube and propagated through 20 sucker holes in each foot holds the robot in place during procedures.

The device, which weighs about the same as an egg and is half the length of a thumb, is controlled by the surgeon via a joystick that allows manipulation of the robot along the surface of the heart--at up to 18 cm per minute--by moving its two body segments back and forth relative to one another, much like a caterpillar. The robot's movements can be tracked visually with a monitor that uses either x-ray video or a magnetic tracker.

The prototype, which has so far has injected dye and attached pacemaker leads to beating hearts inside live pigs, has yet to be tested on humans. Because the robot is small and flexible, it could be inserted using laprascopic surgery, without disturbing the ribcage or deflating the left lung to access the heart. Development of the new robot was reported in the April 18, 2007, edition of New Scientist.

"HeartLander can reach all parts of the heart's surface,” said the HeartLander's chief developer robotics expert Dr. Cameron Riviere. "And because it is stationary relative to the heart's surface, there is no need to interfere with the organ's movement. Entering the body from a single small incision could even allow some heart procedures to be performed without a general anesthetic.”


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