Motor control in medicine

摘要

Embedded motor control for robotic applications is changing medical research and procedures, from the drug-development lab to the radiology department to the operating room. Robotics has profoundly affected the efficiency of drug-discovery research through consistent, reliable, and repeatable control of high-throughput liquid-handling systems, detection readers, incubators, and arrays or carousels of tubes or phials. A linear motor, which is effectively an "uncurled" electrical motor that has a flat stator, produces a linear motion instead of a rotation, and is useful for managing precise amounts of liquids. In addition to managing the accurate dispensing of less-than-microliter quantities of liquids, these systems can accurately manage and position thousands of tubes or phials at a time. Servo motors can be precise enough to rotate, drive, and position the carousels of tubes.