Soft Robot Hugs Your Heart to Keep It Pumping

Three years later, they emerge with a funnel-shaped robot that enfolds the mammalian heart, then actively compresses and twists it to restore normal blood flow after heart failure. Okay, so that's not how it actually happened, but the robot is real. Today, a team of researchers at Harvard University and Boston Children's Hospital, among other participating institutions, published details on an implantable, soft-robotic device that could help failing hearts pump blood without ever touching the blood. The work, including a proof-of-concept experiment with live pigs, was published this week in Science Translational Medicine. Traditional ventricular assist devices (VADs) are used to bypass a failing heart.