Robotic Snake Can Perform Heart Surgeries

A lot of people are scared of going under the Knife for a variety of fears which grip them. That’s why scientists are constantly trying to find a way to create surgical methods with lower risk factors. At the Carnegie Mellon University, a snakelike robot called “CardioArm ” was devised to aid in heart surgeries. The only contact the surgeon makes with the patient’s body is to make an incision so the robot can enter the system. Once inside, CardioArm is controlled by a joystick and a computer for monitoring.

CardioArm is a jointed robot, allowing you to control its head while the rest of its joints follow exactly where the head has been to avoid any accidental internal injuries. The robot wraps itself around the heart until it finds what it’s sent inside the body for (i.e., to remove damaged tissues). The only problem is that being jointed, the CardioArm will have size constraints. As of current, the smallest prototype made measures 12 mm in diameter and 300 mm in length. The end goal, however, is to create a robot tiny enough to fit inside blood vessels.

Other end goals for this future surgical medicine technology constitute modifications for truly non-invasive surgeries. These modifications include the ability of the robot to pass through natural openings like the mouth, as well creating a model with multiple tentacles able to enter through a single opening, but branch out to where they’re supposed to go once inside the body.