Self-assembling gauss gun idea would heal patients from the inside

A research team from the University of Houston and Boston Children’s Hospital debuted a novel new approach to internal medicine: using a swarm of tiny, noninvasive robots as a gauss gun to shoot medicine or clot-busting needles directly at the afflicted tissue. Much like rail guns, gauss guns rely on a series of magnets to accelerate objects — the difference being that these guns transfer force through the magnets themselves, converting the stored magnetic energy into kinetic.

In this application, the swarm of tiny steel “millibots” act as the gun. They would be injected into the patient and individually “steered” into position using an MRI machine whose powerful magnetic field also magnetizes each one. An activator millibot is sent in last and, when it hits the next robot in line, the gun “fires.” Each subsequent robot imparts a small amount of additional energy to the cascade effect. When all this energy reaches the front of the line, it can be used to do a variety of tasks like “puncturing a membrane to release trapped fluid, opening a blocked passageway or delivering a drug to a tissue location several centimeters from a fluid-filled space,” according to the researchers.

The team’s initial proof-of-concept test has shown that the technique does work, as you can see in the video below. Up next, the team will work to miniaturize the robots, getting them small enough to actually fit in your bloodstream, before beginning clinical trials. “Future work,” the authors wrote, “should investigate how the design can be optimized for clinical use cases and implement closed-loop control of the components.” Unfortunately, there’s no word on how much time that’s going to take.

[Image credit: Shutterstock]

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Via: Popular Science

Source: IEEE

All-in-one camera ball scouts dangerous locations

Imagine how much easier it would be if first responders could search inside collapsed buildings, or if police could scope out a suspect’s room for danger before breaking in. That’s the driving force behind the Explorer, a tactical ball equipped with cameras, LED lights and sensors designed to do exactly that. The idea here is that you could simply roll the ball into a room and the six built-in cameras would snap a slew of photos. The software then quickly and intelligently stitches them together in a panorama and, thanks to a built-in wireless hotspot, transmits the image back to your phone, potentially warning you of trapped survivors or dangerous gunmen.

The company behind it is Bounce Imaging, a startup founded by MIT alumnus Francisco Aguilar. He first came up with the idea five years ago in the days following the Haiti earthquake, as search and rescue efforts were hampered by difficult and expensive fiberoptic cameras. The Explorer, on the other hand, is priced to be much more affordable, plus it’s coated in a thick rubber shell so it’s more durable too. Ball cameras have been around for awhile now, but this is one of a few that’s designed specifically for rescue and police work. Indeed, Bounce Imaging has already announced that it’ll be sending out a hundred of these Explorers to police departments across the country. As for what’s next, well, Aguilar says that it might look into optioning that smart image-stitching tech for drones, movies or even your next smartphone.

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Source: MIT News