Brussels, 28 nov (EFE).-A group of German researchers Italian, British and Israeli has been developed with funds from the European Union (EU) a robot capable of operating the brain more accurately than the human hand whose first tests in mannequins have been overcome with success.
Project Robocast, which benefited from funds from the seventh programme framework of the EU’s research has made it possible to develop a new type of robot that enables doctors to make thirteen types of movement against the four who dominate human brain surgery hands little invasive, it highlighted the EC said in a statement on the occasion of the European Robotics week
In addition, the robot enables surgeons to assess tissue and control the intensity of the pressure applied during the operation.
Machine has surpassed his first essays of endoscopic neurosurgery – through a tiny hole in the skull – practiced mannequins, and once you are ready to speak to people, you can help the millions of European patients suffering tumors, epilepsy, or diseases of Parkinson, Gilles or Tourette, said the Commission.
This type of surgery may be performed more easily be ten times more stable than the human pulse robots.
The EC recalled that parallel investigations through the project have begun Active, also financed by European funds, to use robots in brain operations that require that the patient is conscious.
According to EU data, in 2012 the world demand for robots and related products represented 15,500 million euros ($ 3 billion in Europe).
Through the seventh EU research framework programme, the Commission has allocated about EUR 400 million to one hundred projects focused on the development of robots.
Robocast project, which began in 2008, has become their first fruits with satisfactory test dummies in 2011, in both the project Active, which began in April of this year, will have a duration of four years and will have a total budget of 7.62 million euros, of which the Commission has provided 5,77 million. EFE
