Blood vessel connector

The low efficiency of these actuators will limit the applications, however. Less than 1% of the input electrical energy is converted to mechanical work [35]. The commercialization efforts have focused on devices for which efficiency is not an issue. The urinary incontinence microvalves are small enough, and are actuated infrequently enough, to run off of a watch battery for over a month, the blood vessel connectors require only actuation at the time of insertion, and the display would typically be plugged in, like a laptop, except for short periods of time. An autonomous microrobot, however, would consume too much power for these actuators. It is important to keep in mind that an electron is consumed for each ion transported, so that a pencil-sized actuator switching in 1 s would draw a kiloamp of current [136]. 

The actuation technology based on conducting pol3uners has opened interesting perspectives, so that the first commercial applications in the biomedical field, such as blood vessel connectors, Braille displays and cochlear implants, are being developed today [247]. 

FIGURE 1.20 The connector for blood vessels, as developed by Micromuscle AB. (Figure reproduced with permission from Micromuscle AB http //www.micromuscle.com). 

Fig. 15 Ex vivo surgery of the microanastomosis connector. The microanastomosis connector is an implantable medical device intended for recoimecting millimeter-sized blood vessels (Reproduced from Wilson et al. (2007))...

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