Designing the medical robots of the future
The UNSW Medical Robotics Lab is at the forefront of work to develop advanced robotic systems for medical applications, enhancing surgical precision and improving patient care.
The UNSW Medical Robotics Lab is at the forefront of work to develop advanced robotic systems for medical applications, enhancing surgical precision and improving patient care.
At the UNSW Medical Robotics Lab, researchers are developing medical devices that are designed to enhance the quality of human life.
Engineers, neuroscientists and medical doctors work together to create advanced medical devices, wearable haptic devices and soft robotic technologies. The research and development helps to produce new devices and systems that are more accurate and effective, less invasive, and at lower cost.
As UNSW celebrates its 75th birthday, the UNSW Medical Robotics Lab is looking to the future with projects that include flexible and miniature surgical systems for gastrointestinal cancer and cardiovascular disease treatments, soft robotics, wearable haptics, soft assistive devices, artificial organs, programmable textile muscles, and advanced control systems.
Most recently, a team UNSW Sydney’s Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, and Tyree Foundation Institute of Health Engineering (Tyree iHealthE), led by Dr Thanh Nho Do, developed a new class of smart textiles that can shape-shift and turn a two-dimensional material into 3D structures.
The material is constructed from tiny soft artificial ‘muscles’ – which are long silicon tubes filled with fluid which are manipulated to move via hydraulics.
These artificial muscles, which are surrounded by a helical coil of traditional fibres, can be programmed to contract or expand into a variety of shapes depending on its initial structure.
The new smart textile has a wide range of potential applications in many different fields, including use as a compression garment in medical and health scenarios, as a wearable assistive device for those needing help with movement, and even as shape-shifting soft robots which can aid the recovery of people trapped in confined spaces.
The UNSW Medical Robotics Lab team’s smart textile can either be attached to existing passive material, or the artificial muscles can be inter-woven with traditional yarn to create an active fabric.
“These ‘smart fluid textiles’ take the advantage of hydraulic pressure and add the fast response, lightweight, high flexibility and small size of soft artificial muscles. In effect, we have given our smart textiles the expansion and contraction ability in the exact same way as human muscle fibres,” said Scientia Senior Lecturer Dr Do.
“Our smart textiles can be programmed to perform various desired motions and deformations such as shape-shifting structures from 2D to 3D.
“This material has significant benefits as it is made from miniature soft artificial muscles which offer a thin, flexible, and highly conformable structure.”
Dr Do has also helped pioneered to the development of a miniature and flexible soft robotic arm which could be used to 3D print biomaterial directly onto organs inside a person’s body and perform endoscopic surgery to remove cancers..
This technology was selected as one of the Top 4 Robots of The Year in December 2023 by Thomson Reuters. It was also featured by WHO as one of the drivers of future developments in 3D bioprinting and global health.
3D bioprinting is a process whereby biomedical parts are fabricated from so-called bioink to construct natural tissue-like structures.
Bioprinting is predominantly used for research purposes such as tissue engineering and in the development of new drugs – and normally requires the use of large 3D printing machines to produce cellular structures outside the living body.
The new research from the UNSW Medical Robotics Lab resulted in a tiny flexible 3D bioprinter that has the ability to be inserted into the body just like an endoscope and directly deliver multilayered biomaterials onto the surface of internal organs and tissues.
The proof-of-concept device, known as F3DB, features a highly manoeuvrable swivel head that ‘prints’ the bioink, attached to the end of a long and flexible snake-like robotic arm, all of which can be controlled externally.
The research team say that with further development, and potentially within five to seven years, the technology could be used by medical professionals to access hard-to-reach areas inside the body via small skin incisions or natural orifices.
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