Various types of robotics are used in various areas of our life. As a rule, hearing the word "robot", most of us imagine something large, metal, moving on legs or tracks. However, there are robots that are much smaller. For example, a robot created by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. They managed to design a small robot that, using suction cups, clings to the skin and can diagnose it, identifying a variety of conditions.
According to the editorial staff of the Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive and Ubiquitous Technologies, the new robot was named Skinbot V and its dimensions are 4 centimeters in height, 2 in length and 2 in width. Suction cups located on the robot's body help it move in the right direction without any problems. In addition, Skinbot V carries a miniature lamp and a pretty good microscope on board, the data obtained from which can be uploaded to the cloud storage or directly to the required device (tablet, smartphone, computer)
After receiving the information, it is analyzed by the neural network for various skin diseases from psoriasis and the presence of skin parasites to melanoma. Studies have shown that a neural network and a robot do their job quite well, and thanks to the presence of a microscope, various conditions can be detected at a very early stage. In addition, the robot, using the built-in gyroscope, can determine how mobile the area under study is and, on the basis of this, it is able to build a route and choose the most optimal place for anchoring.
At the moment, the robot has only one weak point: it is powered by a wire, but scientists plan to develop an autonomous wireless version in the future. You can watch the work of a miniature diagnostician with suction cups in detail in the video below.
Vladimir Kuznetsov