Slashdot Mirror
Surgical Microbot Developed
An anonymous reader writes to mention a Wired article about the first surgical nanobot developed for practical use. No wider that two human hairs, the machine is intended to swim through arteries and the digestive tract, and can perform surgical procedures in spaces no bigger than 250 microns. The article also addresses safety concerns; the bot will swim upstream from blood flow, so if something goes wrong it can be retrieved on its way back. Likewise, for the most delicate procedures it can be fitted with a tether, to ensure it doesn't get lost. From the article: "The tiny robot, small enough to pass through the heart and other organs, will be inserted using a syringe. Guided by remote control, it will swim to a site within the body to perform a series of tasks, then return to the point of entry where it can be extracted, again by syringe. For example, the microrobot might deliver a payload of expandable glue to the site of a damaged cranial artery -- a procedure typically fraught with risk because posterior human brain arteries lay behind a complicated set of bends at the base of the skull beyond the reach of all but the most flexible catheters."
I for one welcome our surgical microbot overlords.
. . .so now they're going to take over my body from within?
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Summary: Developed TFA: Developing
Just keep Donald Pleasence away from the controls.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Isn't this too big to be a nanobot?
Anywho, i wonder if they'll hook this sucker up to a joystick for real time control, anyone played ballistics? Like that only instead of breaking the speed of sound, you try not to cripple someone for life, for real!!!
I give it 2 thumbs up... 2 thumbs... well, one thumb and a hand twich...
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Can you really call something a nanobot if it is 250 microns wide? Seems like this 'nanobot' is a few orders of magnitude too large(Wikipedia says nanobots are typically devices ranging in size from 0.1-10 micrometres).
use Jokes::Std::Beowulf;
use Jokes::Std::Overlords::Robotic;
Do you have ESP?
The article:
The Slashdot headline:
Nanomachines have already been used to perform surgery. For example, Dr. Victor Niguel developed them to attack the Pempti strain in 2018.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The theory behind the microrobot's propulsion system is modeled after turbine and helicopter blades, Friend said.
"In and of itself, the idea is not especially new, but it has always fallen down around the propulsion system," he said. So, at the end of the day, what we have is another step towards a working microbot, not the finished product.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
...that you think will never actually happen, but it does. While the ones that seem possible don't (flying cars, etc.).
Getting beyond the "bends at the base of the skull" through the arteries is a surgical field called Neuroendovascular Surgery that has been in development since the 1960s and is used on everyone from babies to the old to people with cocaine habits and so forth. If I had an illiness that required it, I'd take a surgeon who performs several hundred of these operations a year over a remote controlled robot.
Now to only get a tiny human to pilot the robot ship like Innerspace...
best of all, the robot won't freak out and go all Ginsu on your penis!
More music, fewer hits
Here is yet another science fiction creation that is on its way to being real. In another couple of years, reading science fiction (on a flexible screen PDA) will be the guide for how stock traders invest.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Thirty years or so ago I loved the idea of having Raquel Welch swimming around in my body. Have you seen her lately? She's probably the reason I need my arteries un-clogged in the first place.
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
lay behind?
lay an egg
lay a chick
lie like a politician
lie like a rug, or a bunch of vessels
Yeaah,
But do they run Linux?
Could not resist the urge...
If you don't like my sig then don't read it.
... did they consider THIS: http://www.pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF084AD-Microbot.jp g#154
-mathx
Does anyone remember a computer game from the 1980s where you'd pilot a probe through a human body, zapping bacteria and plaques with a laser, dispensing drugs for various emergent conditions, and eventually traveling to the brain to destroy a tumor? I can't remember the name of it.
I played that game for hours when I was a kid. My wife is a doctor and she's surprised when I can whip out some medical vocabulary that I learned from that game.
the microrobot might deliver a payload of expandable glue to the site of a damaged cranial artery
I have an AVM in my hypothalamus, so I may have to have this done in the next few years. I hope they get this thing perfected soon!
That must take some mighty swimming prowess for something so small. Like me swimming up against Niagara Falls.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Takes on a whole new meaning when your nanobot craps out.
I used to be with IT..now IT seems strange and scary to me.
'expect to have a prototype by..." does NOT equal "...have developed..." which implies a working nano-sized tool.
This is almost as good as politicians standing up for election spouting all their "projects" they plan to implement with our dollars once we elect them to be our overlords.
I fell in love the idea of swimming around in Raquel Tejada's...
It would be great if Martin Short had them put one of these robots in him and made a documentary on it. I'd watch it.
MEDIBOT
As an aside, I just noticed that my original, non-informed post containing amateur guesses has been modded informative. I must have been unfairly modded Troll in a former lifetime... :-)
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
I guess this is a good time to refresh our memories about what Mr Joy wrote about oh so many years ago... http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.htm l
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it." - Henry Ford
Check out the web site of the PI. He's a mechanical engineer. From his publication history, he appears to have little or no research experience in robotics or in biological settings. He has never built a remotely similar (?) device, neither mechanically, nor in vitro, much less in vivo (which is indescribably more difficult). There is also no mention in the article of how the device might be controlled/programmed, nor how it will navigate, nor how it will know where to stop and do its voodoo, nor how it knows to return.
Given the project's obstacles: cybernetic/sensory/biological, and the lack of relevant domain knowledge of the PI, I give this project not even one chance in hell of producing something demonstrable by 2009 (much less successful). In fact, I'd even bet against finishing before 2050.
Also, WiReD should have pointed us toward some more substantial background info on the project (e.g. a URL, the RFP proposal, etc), unless it didn't think we really cared whether the work was credible or plausible.
Finally, you would think that after 20 years of hyperbole, the nano-wanna-bes would stop promising so much more than they can deliver. It hurts the credibility of not only their institutions, but of every scientist who works at that scale. We artificial intelligence wannabes should know. :-}
I was sure I saw this one months ago and sure enough-
1 _bacteria_bot.html
http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/06121
Nothing like more tired Wired...
In an effort help with police crowd control, scientist have inject all newborns with Brain-Bombs what can either be activated to stun perpetrators or in extreme situations kill them. Each Brain-Bomb is encoded with a special ID tag that is a carefully modified version of the babies SSN (MD5 hash). There is only minimal risk that any two people might have the same number.
The President applauded the new measure and said he would "like to take measures to have everyone in the country fitted with such devices." He noted that it would be invaluable in the upcoming War Draft.
Once the trained hand isn't needed locally, we can put that overpaid neurosurgeon on welfare and outsource control of the robots to (insert least favorite eurasian nation here).
it sounds like a patent application is in order. Everything lines up - no working model, no practical experience, no real plan to market - yup, I'd say that's a patent in the making. Who cares if it takes someone else another decade to get it done, that leaves 17 years of extortion.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Can airport security use these to infiltrate and scan luggage, clothes, and people without knowledge. Can nanobots patrol the womb and prevent impregnation or maybe even std? Can a cloud of nanobots work together to clean airborne illness, flu, or whatever out of the air around sick people. Can a cloud of nanobots be dispatched to infect or disintegrate a person. Will nanobots be used to monitor and control the population. Knowing that stimulating certain parts of the brain has a direct reaction to a persons thoughts and feelings, will nanobots be used toward mind control? Can i put 100 nanobots on separate remote controls into a small hand held maze and play deathmatch. Can i put 100 nanobots inside of a classmates body and play capture the flag with my friends?
Reminds of the science fiction short story "Deep Safari" by Charles Sheffield (originally printed in Asimov's, reprinted along with Georgia On My Mind), about adventure and romance in a virtual reality controlled nanobot stuck in the brain. At really small scales, quantum effects and the body's own Electromagnetic interference can screw things up.
"While others have tried and failed to create microrobots for arterial travel, Friend believes his team will succeed because they really need the money and have already spent far too much time on the project to just give up."
using Asshole.Pedantic.UseStrict;
What if it's let loose on the general public to kill someone or something like it? Then what? This is great for surgery but where are the laws restricting these bots being used by the general public? How long before someone gets enough brain or genetic damage to realize someone was tampering with them using a nanobot? Think.
(shameless plug) My book, Cyberchild, is about medical microbots being developed for brain computing systems getting out of the lab and causing interesting things to happen in the outside world. (/shameless plug).
Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild
I've seen too many sci-fi movies where the little robot gets stuck somewhere and lives in one of my organs forever or deveops its own intelligence and hacks your arteries to pieces......remote control or no! that thing could get lost in there! No thanks! and not to mention, I hate injections. I'd rather be unconcious and they can slice into me that way!