Category Archives: Rovers

The Next Revolution in Medical Devices: Self-Design and Prototyping

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have just returned from the Maker Faire and have seen the future of medical device innovation, invention, and design– Self-design and rapid home prototyping.  For those unfamiliar with the jargon basically technology now exists that can allow the creation of a working prototype of a device from idea to an actual working hand-held version in a physician-inventor’s own home.  This has the potential to democratize the process and eliminate previous massive cost and technological barriers that kept the process inaccessible except to large industry or those with substantial capital resources.

One person I spoke with was calling this the Next Industrial Revolution.  To me this is clearly the inevitable technological evolution of design and device innovation following in the exact path blazed by desktop publishing, digital video and computer based editing for movie creation to name just two examples.  –And once again it is fueled by the exponential progress in computer power –here married to a fanatical base of innovators driving the creation of the raw tools that will be the assembly line of the future.

What is Maker Faire? Maker Fair just had its first NY exhibit and is an offshoot of Make magazine.  MAKE brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. Think of it as technology-hackers.  Its like wood-shop for the 21st century hacker who is building his own radio controlled spy drone or augmented reality device instead of oven mitts and hotplate coasters.  AS they write “this is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will. For example, in our first volume, we show you how to get involved in Kite Aerial Photography, how to make a cheap but effective video camera stabilizer, and how to build a device that reads the hidden information stored on the magnetic stripes on all your credit cards.”

Homelab laser engraver/cutter.  can carve any substance with laser power and precision.  cuts out 3D models too.

But that’s just the beginning.  The sophistication of the home creation kits is mind-blowing.

This is a beagleboard.  It contains all the power of an entire computer.  It was running what looked like a normal desktop with a video capture and object recognition on a version of linux.  It costs less than $500 and can be the basis for home-made computer intelligent devices.  All open source as well.

At the Faire take thousands of people with this mindset, demos, kits, and lessons to “celebrate arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset.”  And as usual for my tech crossovers— add one doctor to the group.

What’s The Medical Significance? As usual I search out emerging technologies not yet used in medicine that have the potential to right now change how we do things.  What’s struck me with all I saw was the common theme that anything that was a high tech machine now today can be imagined, designed, researched, 3D modeled, and turned into working prototype all in a home workshop on an inventor’s budget.  What’s more this now applies to the physical aspects (ie plastic casing and movable parts) and to the electronics being them embedded operating systems or any myriad of sensors.  The theme of the day was that you yourself can see these projects through to this stage and there is a thriving community and ground-swell of momentum to build a grass roots infrastructure to help.

Examples of 3D Prototyping/Desktop Manufacturing:

The left image is a makerbot — you build this machine and then it produces 3d models out of plastic from 3D images on you computer.  You can anything from an action figure to a device handle to well– the middle images was made on a higher end system like that shown on the right.  here the machine first modeled the bones then applied a tissue layer over it.  The system right now can take any 3D dataset from an ultrasound MRI or CT scan and reconstruct 3D tissue or organ models.  I’ll follow up in a later post how scientists are using such technologies to literally build artificial organs in the lab– they build the structure then seed it with living cells that create the organ.  The maker bot replaces a $100,000 fabricator from a decade ago and costs under $1500– and its all open source.

Could You Cure a Disease With a Device Invention?  Does Your Child Think He or She Could?  You’d be Surprised?  The New Inventor’s Mindset for the 21st Century. You probably grew up thinking devices of all sorts and especially electronics were otherworldly gizmos of incomprehensible complexity of design.  The workings of a TV, video camera, or electronic medical diagnostic device where the stuff that only  biomedical engineer with a pocket protector and a degree from MIT could have created.  Your kids think otherwise.  They are comfortable with technology and with programming computers when presented with understandable languages.  They can make a webpage.  They can edit video and retouch photos.  They have a myspace page.  They may tinker with remote control toys.  Many of them with some practice can create 3D computer graphics.  Just recently A Russian amateur filmmaker called Alexander Semenov produced this 2.5 minute bootleg Transformers short with a couple of sub-$1,000 cameras, two hours’ of footage and a month in the home desktop editing suite that many think rivals the effects of a million dollar Hollywood blockbuster.

Understand that the next generation of design and creation tools will use these same sorts of visual programming language and are just as accessible. I walked through the exhibits with a 6 and 9 year old. By the end of the day the 6 year old had soldered an LED lit circuit board to make an electronic toy (parts cost $1), both had piloted radio controlled robots complete with sensors, and had begun to design autonomous robotic creatures– and they had never done this before.  I was recently asked to give a talk to a group of 4th graders working on the Lego First competition.  This is a robotics competition for kids to build working devices.  There are more than 10,000 teams competing this year.  This year’s theme is biomedical research.  They kids were instructed that they have the tools to invent a device that could solve a medical problem.  They don’t believe only MIT engineers solve problems.  They expect to.  Remember who invented youtube and facebook.


home kit for sensor based mobile search and rescue bot.  The same sophistication as a military robot and the same technology as in implantable body rovers being developed.

robotic arm prototype- could model prosthetics

home made kit for scanning tunneling microscope for research uses.  A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a powerful instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. For an STM, good resolution is considered to be 0.1 nm lateral resolution and 0.01 nm depth resolution. With this resolution, individual atoms within materials are routinely imaged and manipulated.  This is now a do-it-yourself kits for under $200 all open source design and technology

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How Smartdust, Souveillance, Web 3.0, and Personalized Genetics Will Transform the Future of Medical Diagnostics

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There has been a flurry of debate in the military, industrial, and privacy sectors on “smartdust” and the concept of “souveillance” – but no one has yet realized this technology is poised to springboard into medicine and transform medical diagnostics.  Here I wanted to give you an overview of what this idea is and why you should keep your eye on it. 

First the general concept background:

“Smartdust” refers to micro devices (called motes) which are detection microchips each potentially the size of a speck of dust.  These grains of sand however can automatically self-network.  So far people have conceived of these low-power distributed sensing networks as having functions for climate control systems, entertainment devices and especially for big brother type surveillance systems.  

Wikipedia wrote “the smartdust concept was introduced by Kristofer S. J. Pister (University of California) in 2001 , though similar ideas existed in science fiction before then. A recent review discusses various techniques to take smartdust in sensor networks beyond millimeter dimensions to the micrometre level.  A typical application scenario is scattering a hundred of these sensors around a building or around a hospital to monitor temperature or humidity, track patient movements, or inform of disasters, such as earthquakes. In the military, they can perform as a remote sensor chip to track enemy movements, detect poisonous gas or radioactivity. The ease and low cost of such applications have raised privacy concerns.”  Beyond web 2.0 vast networks of these real time sensors are once possible technology leap of the yet inknown web 3.0.

General concept – What is Souveillance?:  is a term from Steve Mann that refers to “bottom up” surveillance using smart dust as opposed to “top down” big brother networks looking at us little people.  Here instead activities are recorded from the “perspective of a participant in the activity, typically by way of small portable or wearable recording devices that often stream continuous live video to the Internet.”  Remember the impact of the Rodney King video and of all the user generated video content on the web.  Now fast forward to a world where a large segment or even a majority of the populice had real time streaming video devices on all the time (no we are not going to discuss the porn angle on this).   This has also been called “inverse surveillance”.

Privacy advocates have been debating the merits or horrors of this type of sensor technology.   I serve on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Lifeboat Foundation which is dedicated to protecting us from future technological threats through advocacy research and education.  They have been having a heated debate on the “paradox of smart dust: we may not live without the greater security provided by smart dust, but many think they could not live with smart dust impinging on our privacy.’  

Medical Implications:  I have a vision that once this type of low power networked microsensor technology exists it will logically lead to medical sensor technology.  Potential uses I see include:

  1. mass screening for infectious disease or bioterror agents.  Subjects walking into screening areas could be checked for signature molecules associated with infectious agents.  Just as we have metal detectors and now have molecular signature detectors (the litle wipe test for explosives at the airport) we will have such biological screening techology.
  2. The next step will be similar screening for disease states.  Metabolomics is one such technology. Metabolomics is the study of the small-molecule metabolite byproducts left behind from cellular processes.  In simple terms it’s like examining poop.  The concept is that by measuring the collection of all the byproducts of the cells metabolism you can get a snapshot of the physiology of a cell or organism that translates to health.  One such sensor is being developed as a breath sensor for disease.  This could lead to Star Trek like medical sensors. 
  3. Similarly, such technology will lead to individual genetic screening for disease risk using chips that interact with the tiny bits of DNA we shed every time we touch something. Companies commercializing this approach also already exist and have products. 
  4. Taking a clue from smart dust we will then inject such sensors into our bodies where thy could circulate in the bloodstream or sit in the abdminal cavity silently sensing for disease, infectious agents, or the DNA or signature molecules of a cancer cell.  Alternative chips could exist that sit and slowly release drugs when such cell reappear once a patient is diagnosed.

I will be writing more about the details of these concepts and devices being developed in future posts now that I have introducted the concepts.  Let me know what you think! 

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New Flexible Biodegradable Battery Invented

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ars technica reports on the invention of a paper thin flexible biodegradable battery.

Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and MIT have developed a new material that eliminates the need for a multilayer battery. They grew carbon nanotubes on a silicon substrate and impregnated the gaps between the tubes with cellulose—that’s right, plain old paper. The cellulose also covered the ends of the nanotubes, but once it had dried, the paper material could be peeled off of the silicon substrate, leaving one end of the carbon nanotubes exposed to form an electrode.

By putting two sheets of paper together with the cellulose side facing inwards (and a drop of electrolyte on the paper), a supercapacitor is formed. These supercapacitors retain the flexibility of normal paper, but they have a rating that is comparable to that of standard commercial hardware.
By putting a drop of electrolyte on a single sheet and then putting a metal foil consisting of lithium and aluminum on each side, a lithium ion battery is formed. Researchers indicate that small prototypes could already power small mechanical devices like fans. These batteries operate over a wide range of temperatures, with the research showing that they can operate between -78–150°.

Potential Medical Applications:  Its been reported that bodily fluids can act as the electrolyte. The capacitor would be put into a patient fully charged but dry, and when more power was needed, bodily fluids would be allowed into the device to allow it to discharge.

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Bionic Friday Posts

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For your enjoyment today – a collection of forward thinking docinthemachine posts about robotics and bionic humans.  Take a minute today to push your mind a decade into the future.  Ponder with me roboic amoeba rovers inthe body, bionic retinal implants, and humanoid androids. 

Finish the day with a post on the singularity and mind transfer into a computer. 

What makes a human human?  While you may think you know, the distinction is blurring as a result of medical technology advances.

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Robotic Amoeba Created: Teens Fear Bionic Blob

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Dennis Hong, of Virginia Tech College of Engineering is designing a Whole Skin Locomotion (WSL) mechanism for robots to work on much the same principle as the pseudopod — or cytoplasmic “foot” — of the amoeba. With its elongated cylindrical shape and expanding and contracting actuating rings, the WSL can turn itself inside out in a single continuous motion, mimicking the motion of the cytoplasmic tube an amoeba generates for propulsion.

The inventor says:

“Our preliminary experiments show that a robot using the WSL mechanism can easily squeeze between obstacles or under a collapsed ceiling,” Hong said. The mechanism, which can use all of its contact surfaces for traction, can even squeeze through holes with diameters much smaller than its normal width.

“This unique mobility makes WSL the ideal locomotion method for search-and-rescue robots that need to travel over or under rubble,” said Hong, who hopes his research will help promote the concept of bio-inspiration in robot design. “The mechanism also has the potential for use in medical applications — such as robotic endoscopes, for example, where a robot must maneuver in tight spaces.”

Of course my mind sees yet another version of an impnatable robot for medical diagnosis and treatment in the evolving realm of what I call “Future Vision”: the coming radical transformation of medicine.

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Docinthemachine Guest Blogging on Lifeboat Foundation Blog

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 I am honored and excited to have been invited to guest blog on the Lifeboat Foundation Blog.  My first post is on the new DARPA 2007 focus plan and its relation to medical technology. 

For those unfamiliar with them, their mission statements sums it up:

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards a technological singularity.
 
Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, including new methods to combat viruses (such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods), effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.
 
We believe that, in some situations, it might be feasible to relinquish technological capacity in the public interest (for example, we are against the U.S. government posting the recipe for the 1918 flu virus on the internet). We have some of the best minds on the planet working on programs to enable our survival.

They have an impressive Scientific Advisory Board including a large helping of professors and Nobel Laureats (and me).  You can read more about them here.  

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Future Vision in Surgery: Let the Podcasts Begin!

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Here it is folks, docinthemachine’s first podcast to play on the site.  This piece is near and dear to my heart.  The Topic is “Future Vision” – and it’s about the coming radical transformation of surgery.  I review how endoscopy allowed us to move from invasive to minimaly invasive surgery.  What’s next?  The transformation to microinvasive surgery (miniaturized robotic rovers inside the body) and non-invasive surgery (3D reconstructed diagnostic imaging and therapeutics via powerful computers). 

 

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This podcast was an interiew I did at the 35th annual AAGL conference in Las Vegas.  Coming soon I will post my keynote lecture on this topic with powerpoint and videos along with the entire plenary session on this topic featuring Dr. Chutkin (GI swallowable pill cams), Barish (radiology virtual imaging), and Andy Van Dam (yes the founder of sigggraph on virtual reality data manipulation). 

you can read more of my ideas about the future of surgery including alternative visualization (seeing what the eye cannot) here

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did making them!

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DARPA 2007 Pt2: Major Achievements, Future Plans, & Medical Benefits

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As I previously reported, DARPA has announced its strategic plan for 2007.  In this part 2 of my analysis of what their future will bring us, I will summarize their major system achievements to date. No doubt there have beeen hundreds of amazing projects with countless devices that were produced.  Here are the top major areas where they propelled advancement and a roadmap for the major future target projects and my view of the potential medical offshoots of each.  If you are unfamiliar with how and why the military’s R&D projects leads to revolutionary medicine more than biomed industry read the details here first.

DARPA was launched in 1957 after the Russians beat us into space with Sputnik, and therefore all the initial projects were space related.  In fact, the creation of NASA alsmost saw the dismatling of DARPA. 

DARPA Lists the following as their major accomplishments.  After this list you’ll find their 2007 and future projects and my medical offshoot benefit predictions.

1) Stealth Technology for Aircraft:  DARPA began developing the technologies for stealthy aircraft in the early 1970s under the HAVE BLUE program, which led to prototype demonstrations in 1977 of the Air Force’s F-117 tactical fighter (of Desert Storm fame). After the DARPA HAVE BLUE Stealth Fighter program, DARPA launched the TACIT BLUE technology demonstration, contributing directly to the development of the B-2 bomber.

2) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles:  The Global Hawk and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been seeing considerable battlefield use in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. DARPA started on the concept of a high altitude, long-range, unmanned system in the 1970s with the TEAL RAIN program. The Tier 2 Predator medium-altitude endurance UAV evolved directly from DARPA’s AMBER and Gnat 750-45 designs and was operationally deployed in the mid-1990s.

3) The Internet:  Sorry Al Gore, it was actually DARPA that invented the internet.  The most well known of all DARPA technologies began in the 1960s-1970s with the development of the ARPANet and its associated TCP/IP network protocol architecture. DARPA’s development of packet switching is the fundamental element of both public and private networks spanning the DoD, the Federal Government, U.S. industry, and the world.

MAJOR FUTURE ICONIC PLANS:  The Strategic plan for 2007 lays out the following major strategic plans of focus- along with my view of potential medical applications

• Chip-Scale Atomic Clock: miniaturizing an atomic clock to fit on a chip to provide very accurate time as required, for example, in assured network communications – technology could be used on various implantable diagnostic devices as well as for implantable next generation pacemakers and regulatory bioimplants


• Global War on Terrorism: technologies to identify and defeat terrorist activities such as the manufacture and deployment of improvised explosive devices- will lead to the development of new smart diagnostic chips and devices.  While initially these will screen for explosives and threat molecules, in the future these could identify tumor markers, metabolomic molecules, drug levels, and countless diagnostic and therapeutic molecules.

• Air Vehicles: unmanned air vehicles that quickly arrive at their mission station and can loiter there for very long periods.  The development of unmanned rover devices will directly affect the ability to produce and control implantable miniaturized diagnostic rovers placed into the human body.

• Space: The U.S. military’s ability to use space is one of its major strategic advantages, and DARPA is working to ensure the United States maintains that defense advantage.  Space medicine research will directly come from this next generation of off-world research.  It is still unknown what new types of materials can be produce in weightless ness and how 0-gravity will affect biologically systems.  The research is coming…

• High Productivity Computing Systems: supercomputers are fundamental to a variety of military operations, from weather forecasting to cryptography to the design of new weapons;DARPA is working to maintain our global lead in this technology.  Supercomputers will directly be used to crack genetic codes and to test potential new therapeutic molecules.  The future of expanded supercomputing will see a shift to much more of the process being done on-line as opposed to on the bench-top.  Genes will be identified, their proteins calculated, and therapeutic drugs designed and initially tested in the virtual world. 
• Real-Time Accurate Language Translation: real-time machine language translation of structured and unstructured text and speech with near-expert human translation accuracy.  Not sure on this one.  Maybe it will just let me get tech support form Dell better.  Then again, I never got a chance to take that spanish for doctors course so this would have helped a lot in the ER to get a better history!

• Biological Warfare Defense: technologies to accelerate the development and production of vaccines and other medical therapeutics from 12 years to only 12 weeks.  Medical use is obvious on this one.

• Prosthetics: developing prosthetics that can be controlled and perceived by the brain, just as with a natural limb.  Medical use is obvious.

• Quantum Information Science: exploiting quantum phenomena in the fields of computing, cryptography, and communications, with the promise of opening new frontiers in each area.  Fundemental new knowledge in how materials operate.  Countless medical implications as we change our understanding.
• Newton’s Laws for Biology: DARPA’s Fundamental Laws of Biology program is working to bring deeper mathematical understanding and accompanying predictive ability to the field of biology, with the goal of discovering fundamental laws of biology that extend across all size scales.  Medical implications are staggering, huge, and obvious.

• Low-Cost Titanium: a completely revolutionary technology for extracting titanium from the ore and fabricating it promises to dramatically reduce the cost for military-grade titanium alloy, making it practical for many more applications.  Could lead to low weight high strength implants, surgical tools, and prosthetics.

• Alternative Energy: technologies to help reduce the military’s reliance on petroleum.  Can afford to drive to the hospital.

•High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System: novel, compact, high power lasers making practical small-size and low-weight speed-of-light weapons for tactical mobile airand ground-vehicles.  Potential new therapuetic energy source for surgery.

Stay tuned for Part 3 on ongoing projects for 2007 from DARPA…

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New Swallowable Pillcam Aims to Sniff not Just Look

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I have written a lot about the coming radical transformation of medicine where traditional surgery will be replaced by remote sensing and interventional devices. You can read background about another pillcam here and a cardiac rover here.

Medgadget reports on the development of the next stage of the Pillcam – a swallowable remote gut camera. Called Nemo – they describe it as:

The objective of the NEMO project is to increase patient compliance with currently recommended screening guidelines by developing an advanced cancer screening system that is patient-friendly, highly sensitive and specific for early detection of cancer. To achieve this NEMO will converge optical technologies with Nano-technologies, biosensing and maneuvering technologies to create a unique PillCam capsule endoscope capable of secretion analysis and the detection of marked and deep tissue disorders. The consortium believes the combination of the image and molecular analysis to mark the tumor may provide a novel and effective medical device for mass screening for GI cancer

A company press release is here.

What is so exciting here is companies are now making the move to adding next generation diagnostic capabilities to older devices.  It’s just a matter of time until metabolomics, proteomics, and noninvasive optical biopsies are incorporated.

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