THE ROBOTS ARE coming. They’re coming to drive your car, they’re coming for your job, and they’re coming for your heart. Like, you may literally have a robotic heart one day.
That is, if a peculiar new device is any indication. Researchers have developed a robotic sleeve that fits over the heart (well, a pig’s heart at the moment) and pumps like the organ would itself. The idea is that if a patient is going into cardiac arrest, the best way to help the heart is to be the heart. One day that may mean patients with cardiac problems could get their own robotic heart to kick in if their ticker starts to give way.
This is the vanguard of a new breed of robots that not only get along with humans (when was the last time you had a pleasant experience with a crushingly powerful industrial robotic arm?), but interact safely with their flesh. And it’s forcing humanity to reconsider what a robot even is in the first place—because more and more, the robots will become a part of us.
So, the heart robot. Its “muscles” are made of silicone, compressing and twisting thanks to a series of actuators powered with air. In the lab, the researchers chemically induced cardiac arrest in pigs wearing the device, then monitored the electrical output of their heartbeats. “In the study, we ended up using a pacemaker to override the electrical activity of the heart, and pace it so we were controlling the rate at which the heart beat,” says lead author Ellen Roche, a biomedical engineer at the National University of Ireland, Galway. “Then, with that same signal, we were controlling our device.” Working with the heart, the robot increased blood flow through the aorta by 50 percent.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
