Tuesday, December 7, 2010

First Lego League

FLL_SUNYIT_2010_crashtestduI participated in First Lego league this year. The theme was Body Forward, and our team team chose how to heal or improve a body part. We decided to focus our research on the spine.

In our grand search for a problem we searched dangerous jobs online.

We came up with an entire list but finally narrowed it down to spine surgery. It’s not really a dangerous job but it can be very hard.

We then interviewed a neurosurgeon who does spine surgery. He taught us all about spine surgery and what was required.

After that we went on other field trips.

I went to the MIT museum in Boston. We got to see the Black Falcon, an early surgical robot.

We also visited an operating room at St. Peter’s Hospital.  While we were there we got to see the Da Vinci robot which is a actual robot that is being used today.  Go to my mom’s blog, at Albany Kid, to read about this field trip.

Our team decided to solve the problem of surgery in urban bomb situations. This solution solves two kinds of problems: improving the body, and healing a body. Currently, surgeons are limited in what kind of surgery techniques they can do with their human body. In addition, a war situation can be very dangerous and it can be impossible for a surgeon to do shrapnel surgery in war conditions.

Dr. Scheid, the neurosurgeon that we interviewed, told us about soldiers who have to be flown in to hospitals in the US to get this kind of surgery. And, he told us that many times they are flown in for the surgery, and then flown right back afterwards.

We wanted to create a surgical robot that would allow this surgery to be done right on the field in such a way as to keep the surgeon safe, while providing a sterile medic conditions for the patient.

Our solution was DREGS: Disaster Robotic Emergency General Surgery. This robot cures shrapnel wounds in war situations while defending the patient.

Our Robot’s key features are:

  • A bullet proof titanium body
  • An auto turret
  • It is remote controlled

I can see this kind of robot being manufactured someday, but with a lot of updates.

 

Video: First Lego League Poster

Here is a list of articles we used: