The Future Is Scary: Snake Robots For Heart Surgery

02 Feb 2011 by Jasmine Stone in Tech/Sci, Very Cool, World

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I’m not sure if this beats prosthetic tentacles, but it’s close. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are building snake-like robots that can reach delicate organs that don’t generally respond well to getting cut open. Because the prospect of surgery wasn’t frightening enough before.

I was sort of hoping they’d go with SnakeBot, but the designers are calling it Cardio Arm, because it’s supposed to extend into your heart like an arm, I guess. It’s fitted with a front-end camera, so that people driving the SnakeBot 5000 can figure out which part of the heart it’s in, and flexible parts that surgical tools can be inserted through, for the surgery.

Even better, these guys can be made to go limp in the case of an emergency so that they don’t cause too much trauma in the chest cavity – because having a limp metal snake robot in my chest cavity is the last thing I want when I go into cardiac arrest. See also: chestbursters.

[Carnegie Mellon]

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