RoboSurgery and NanoSurgery Reality vs. Imagination By Tom Brightbill

Excerpt “…and pushed a machine, mounted on a delicate robot arm like a dental tool, over Bud’s forehead. The arm homed in automatically on the old gun, moving with alarming speed and determination.” -From The Diamond Age By Neal Stephenson

Robot Surgery Today Robots are used in surgery today (think cardiac surgery) Are more precise, create smaller incisions, leading to quicker recovery Just take over the job of a surgeon but aren’t particularly groundbreaking b/history/future/robotics.asp

Surgery Today-Large and Unwieldy Disease strikes and breaks down cells at the molecular level Tools, like scalpels, are crude and extremely large when compared to this scale Surgery= only b/c of cells’ ability to recover

Is Nanotech. in the Future of Medicine? Nanotechnology could: –Allow us to distribute medicine at the molecular and cellular level –Kill cancer cells, or other diseases –Replace and repair cells (think artificial organelles) –Clean our plague in arteries, preventing heart attacks –Repair damaged DNA in chromosomes

Theoretical Nanorobot Design

Mas Information Due to the size of capillaries, these nanorobots would about about 3 microns across (human hair) It may be possible to inject a fleet of robots that would self-replicate and be programmed to a specific task Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Deoderant

NanoSurgery Could…. Allow for physicians to just inject nanobots Hospitals=injection clinics Self-applied? Unparalleled precision

Feasibility Issues/Problems No actual nanorobots have been built Understanding of conditions at that size are not well understood (physics at nanoscale, i.e. friction) Lubrication at that level is tricky

Acknowledgements ndMedicine.htmlhttp:// ndMedicine.html pub/history/future/robotics.asphttp:// pub/history/future/robotics.asp now.com/nanotechnology-glossary-V- Z.htmhttp:// now.com/nanotechnology-glossary-V- Z.htm