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Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Robots find niche in surgery, rehabilitation and drug development
By Brendan Lynch
Robotic surgery gains traction
MHT Emerging Technologies Forum: Robotics
IRobot family tree
Companies making machines that rehabilitate muscles with limited motion, perform surgery and help find new drugs are among the hottest in the robotics industry.
Medical robotics— including surgical and rehabilitation robots —is the hottest sector in the industry, according to David Barrett, associate professor of mechanical engineering and design at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham.
On the rehabilitation side, Hocoma AG, a Switzerland-based company with its U.S. headquarters in Rockland, has developed robotic exoskeletons that, in some cases, have restored patients’ ability to walk.
“It turns out your nervous system is trainable,” Barrett said.
Neville Hogan, co-founder of Interactive Motion Technologies Inc. perfers to call his company’s technology “therapeutic” rather than rehabilitative, saying the product is more like Lasik surgery than eyeglasses. Interactive Motion makes the InMotion shoulder, wrist, hand and ankle robots, which are aimed at treating people who have lost motion as a result of stroke. The company’s modular machines work out the affected muscle, include a video game, and sense the user’s strength level.
“If the patient lags behind, the machine moves them forward. If the patient goes faster, the machine does nothing,” he said.
Rehabilitative robotics has demonstrated impressive technology and attracted attention and government funding, the market for rehabilitative robots hasn’t been completely proven. Hogan said that while government funding is supporting prosthetic projects, there aren’t enough amputees to create a large market. Hocoma’s product focuses on walking, which is a tougher problem to solve -- Hogan said he wasn’t impressed with Hocoma’s clinical data. Those are among the reasons Interactive Motion is focusing on the more than 5 million U.S. stroke victims.
“There’s a pent-up need that’s enormous,” he said.
While not moving a huge amount of the robots, Neville said Interactive Motion doubled its sales from 2008 to 2009.
Last week, Cardiorobotics, a Newport, R.I.-based company with offices in Pittsburgh, opened a 14,500-square-foot facility in Raynham. Cardiorobotics makes the cardioARM, a snake-like, remote-controlled robotic probe intended to minimize incisions necessary for surgical procedures. The company has raised more than $16 million in ventuer funding this year.
Robots are making drug discovery research more efficient as well -- as Barrett said, “There are only so many PhDs.” Drug discover firms set up rooms similar to clean rooms in the chip fabrication industry, except the arms are moving liquid in pipettes instead of silicon.
“They can do it without getting bored and do it 24 hours a day,” he said.
Other than medical robotics, Barrett said military robotics, including bomb disposal robots and unmanned aerial vehicles are also hot, singling out Helen Greier’s CyphyWorks as a startup that has the industry wondering what its up to.
“There’s a new company every two or three weeks,” Barrett said.
A number of factors have led to these fields coalescing: In the past 15 or 20 years, technology has become more advanced and cheaper, and students are being exposed to robotics at an earlier age through programs like Dean Kamen’s First Robotics.
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