MEDICINE
SAFEPLACEJ
Incubators provide controlled warmth, humidity and oxygen
forprematureorsicknewborns,andallowcontinuous
monitoringofababy’scorebodytemperature.Adoubleair
curtain helps maintain a balanced climate inside the incubator.
Theincubatorshownhereisnottheonethatsavedhisnow
four year old son’s life, but it still provokes strong feelings for
Riedler. “The machine itself looks almost alive inside,” he says.ZROBO-DOC
The German Aerospace Centre’s MiroSurge system is at the
cutting edge of ‘telesurgery’, where surgeons manipulate
robotic arms remotely rather than holding surgical implements
themselves. The latest machines, such as this one, allow the
surgeontoseea3Ddisplayofthesiteoftheoperationand‘feel’
what the robotic arms are touching, in real time, via the
instruments at their workstation. This means a surgeon could,
in theory, conduct an operation from anywhere in the world.GROWABACKBONE 3
This is a rear view of the ECCE2 (Embodied Cognition in a
Compliantly Engineered Robot), a world famous bot built at the
Technical University of Munich. “This was exciting because it
was part of the Human Brain Project, and they’d built this robot
based on how the actual human neural and anatomical system
works and moves,” says Riedler. The robot has bones, joints,
muscles and tendons, allowing researchers to investigate the
brain mechanisms responsible for our own movement.