Open heart surgery may soon be performed on the beating heart without the need for bypass, or human hands for that matter. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have developed a robot that is able to crawl over the surface of the beating heart in vivo and inject dye, place pace makers and perform other minor surgeries. So far the robot, named HeartLander, has successfully been used in porcine operations. If all goes well, scientists hope to see HeartLander touch down in humans around 2013.
See the HeartLander research page here.
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