A Robot Finger Might Someday Take Your Pulse, Check for Tumors

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A newly developed soft robotic finger with a sophisticated sense of touch could one day help your doctor perform routine office examinations, a new study suggests.

The finger can take a person’s pulse and detect abnormal lumps, researchers reported Oct. 10 in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.

Such technology could help detect diseases like breast cancer at earlier and more treatable stages, researchers said.

It also might help ease patients who are anxious about being handled and felt by a doctor, they added.

“By further development to improve its efficiency, we also believe that a dexterous hand made of such fingers can act as a ‘Robodoctor’ in a future hospital, like a physician,” said investigator Hongbo Wang, a sensing technologies researcher at the University of Science and Technology of China.

“Combined with machine learning, automatic robotic examination and diagnosis can be achieved, particularly beneficial for these undeveloped areas where there is a serious shortage in health workers,” Wang added in a journal news release.

Rigid robotic fingers already exist, but they haven’t proven to be up to the task of delicate medical examination, researchers said.

More recently, lightweight, safe and low-cost soft robotics have been recreating the movement of human hands, but haven’t been able to mimic the sense of touch that real fingers enjoy.

“Despite the remarkable progress in the last decade, most soft fingers presented in the literature still have substantial gaps compared to human hands,” the researchers wrote.

To overcome this challenge, the researchers placed conducive fiber coils inside a soft robotic finger that could monitor in real time how far the digit bends as it touches an object, as well as how much force occurs at the fingertip.

Researchers tested the soft finger’s abilities by stroking it with a feather, tapping and pushing it with a glass rod, and repeatedly bending it. The device’s sensors accurately perceived the type and quantity of force applied in these tests.

To check its potential medical usefulness, the team also mounted the finger on a robotic arm and ran it across a large silicone sheet containing three lumps.

The finger detected all three lumps, and also correctly located an artery on a person’s wrist and took their pulse.

“Humans can easily recognize the stiffness of diverse objects by simply pressing it with their finger,” the researchers write. “Similarly, since the [device] has the ability to sense both its bending deformation and the force at the fingertip, it can detect stiffness similar to our human hand by simply pressing an object.”

The team next plans to add additional sensors to create even more flexibility in the finger, which would be needed for effective and efficient medical examinations.

“We hope to develop an intelligent, dexterous hand, together with a sensorized artificial muscle-driven robotic arm, to mimic the unparalleled functions and fine manipulations of the human hands,” Wang said.

More information

The Mayo Clinic has more about robotics and medicine.

SOURCE: Cell Press, news release, Oct. 9, 2024

Source: HealthDay

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