The smaller and more agile the available instruments, the more treatments can be performed using minimally invasive rather than open surgery. However, conventional minimally invasive instruments, which are moved and curved by mechanical devices such as pulleys, cannot be built arbitrarily small. Therefore, we are looking at structures made of elastic tubes that are curved and stretched purely by their specific arrangement and superposition. We are working to make such structures the next generation of minimally invasive and robotically guided instruments with even broader applications than before.
GeccoUnit
Image: Juliane Mayer