Wasp inspires brain-boring surgical robot
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Date posted: 21/01/2009
Posted by: Site Administration
This story is from the category
 The Brain

The female wood wasps of the Siricidae family use a needle-like ovipositor to deposit eggs inside pine trees. This has two dovetailed shafts, each covered in backward-facing teeth. To bore into wood, the wasp rapidly oscillates each shaft backwards and forwards. As the shaft is pulled backwards, its sharp teeth catch in the wood's tissue and prevent it from retreating, so with each oscillation the ovipositor takes a small step forward. The tension created by the gripping teeth braces the shaft and prevents the needle from buckling or breaking.

Now, a team that includes Rodriguez y Baena is mimicking this mechanism to create a medical probe. The researchers have developed a prototype silicon needle consisting of two shafts with 50-micrometre-long fin-shaped teeth. Motors oscillate the two shafts to propel the device forwards in the same way as the wood wasp's ovipositor.

Preliminary tests have shown that the device can crawl across the surface of brain-like gels and burrow its way into pig muscle tissue. The team will present the probe at the ROBIO conference in Bangkok, Thailand, in February.

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