A soft robot can monitor electrical activity in brain by inserting six sensor-filled legs on the surface of brain after putting through a hole in the skull. The concept has been evaluated with small pigs, and it has the potential to one day assist people who suffer from epileptic seizures.
A soft robot with the ability to deploy six sensor-filled legs on the surface of the brain can be implanted into the skull through a very small opening. A variant of this soft robot has undergone successful testing in a small pig, and there is the possibility that it will eventually be scaled up for testing in humans.
When opposed to the conventional method of implanting electrodes on the surface of the brain, which requires the surgeon to make a hole in the patient’s skull that is the same size as the device when it is completely extended, the notion provides an alternative that is less intrusive. In the future, it may be possible to help monitor and perhaps treat patients who suffer from epileptic seizures or other neurological problems if it is shown to be both safe and effective when tested on humans.
“There’s actually a really large surface area that you can reach without doing a large craniotomy,” explains Stéphanie Lacour, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
The length of the soft robot is two centimeters, and the flexible silicone polymer that is used to make its legs is its primary material. When the legs are completely extended, they cover a circle that is four centimeters wide and resemble curving flower petals that are spiraling around the center body. Electrodes are implanted in each leg in order to monitor the activity in the brain.
The scientists are working to upgrade the robot without increasing the hole in skull
According to Sukho Song, who is a member of the study team and works at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, the length of the legs in future prototypes might be increased to 8 or 10 centimeters without the need to expand the size of the hole that is made in the skull.
When tucked in, the legs look like a sleeve with the cuff pushed back up towards the shoulder, as if it were being turned inside out. This gives the appearance that the legs are being turned inside out. In order to unfurl, the legs take in fluids, which causes the legs to be pushed outward.
The robot was evaluated using a replica of the brain that was constructed out of hydrogel and plastic. However, the researchers also demonstrated how they could implant a single robotic leg that was straight and measured 15 millimeters in length into the brain of a Gottingen minipig thorough its skull. During a demonstration inside the live animal, the electrodes on the soft robot recorded patterns of brain activity as the researchers electrically stimulated the minipig’s snout. This took place during the experiment.
According to Lacour, deploying a soft robot onto the surface of the brain is difficult since there is almost no gap between the human brain and the skull; on average, this gap is only one millimeter. The researchers wanted to avoid putting an excessive amount of strain on the robot’s brain, so they engineered the legs of the robot so that they would gradually extend.
There is no requirement for additional cameras or external sensors because the strain sensors that are built in each leg of the robot send information about when the legs have fully deployed themselves. According to Damiano Barone, who works at the University of Cambridge, “their inventive use of strain sensors… has the potential to reduce the need for post-operative imaging and shorten the time spent in the operating theatre.”
After the monitoring of the brain has been completed, the legs of the robot are deflated so that they can be removed from the patient more simply by a surgeon. Through a spinoff company that will be called Neurosoft Bioelectronics, the researchers intend to someday commercialize the soft robot.
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