During a recent experiment at Boston Children’s Hospital, bioengineers used a robotic catheter to reach a leaky valve inside pig hearts. But get this—the device was completely autonomous, navigating through the heart all by itself and without the benefit of a surgeon’s guiding hand. Welcome to the future of heart surgery.
New research published today in Science Robotics describes a robotic catheter that’s capable of moving autonomously inside a living body. In tests, the device navigated through beating, blood-filled pig hearts in search of its target—a leaky prosthetic valve. Once at the scene, a surgeon took over to finish the repair.
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 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
