Medical robots and micro machines

Abstract

Over the past 10 years we have developed micro-motion robots and micro-surgical robots for use in surgery on single living cells and populations of cells (tissue). These devices were designed to have both wide displacement bandwidths and high displacement dynamic ranges. Parallel drive beam bending mechanisms were developed together with displacement transducers able to transduce the high displacement dynamic range/spl times/bandwidth products that arise. High performance force reflecting human interfaces have also been developed to enable human control of the robots. Future work involves the development of new technologies for producing powerful autonomous micro-robots capable of moving within the human body.