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NeuroArm Robotic Surgeon 'Hands'
The robotic 'hands' of NeuroArm are rock-steady, and can move in much smaller increments than a human being's hands. Last week, NeuroArm was used to remove a brain tumor from the patient Paige Nickason - a first.
(From NeuroArm)
The human hand can steady itself and move in increments of one or two millimeters. NeuroArm can move in increments of just fifty microns. A micron is one millionth of a meter. Also, NeuroArm's robotic 'hands' can operate in the brain in a way that is less invasive and more delicate than a surgeon's hands.
NeuroArm is not an autonomous robot; it operates under the direction of physicians using remote controls and an imaging screen for close work.
I think Raymond Z. Gallun called this one in his 1939 story Masson's Secret:
There was a long steel arm or standard that could be clamped on the end of an operating table. At the end of the arm was a binocular microscope. Beneath the latter were hundreds of screw buttons. And gathered right where the microscope was focused - where a needle-point beam of intense light could be projected for illumination - there was a ring of tiny metal prongs. You turned the screws below and the prongs moved - any or all of them - in any plane or direction you could mention, and with caliper slowness, minuteness and precision. At the end of each prong was a surgical tool - blades, tweezers, probes - so fine you could just see them with the naked eye.Micro-surgery!..
(Read more about Gallun's microsurgery tool)
If I recall correctly, Robert Heinlein thought about tiny waldos that could be used to perform surgery a few years later.
Here's a handful of medical robots that might soon be found in a hospital near you:
- InTouch Companion: Medical Rounding Robot
- Doctor-Bots Play 'Operation'
- Snake-like Robots For Throat Surgery Doc Ock-Style
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/19/2008)
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