Recent advances in robotics technology make it possible to create prosthetics that can duplicate the natural movement of human legs which promises to dramatically improve the mobility of lower-limb amputees.

In the foreseeable future, robots will be sticking steerable needles in your brain to remove blood clots; capsule robots will be crawling up your colon as a painless replacement for the colonoscopy; and ultra-miniaturized snake robots will remove tumors from your bladder and other body cavities.

These stories from the past year show how Vanderbilt is making an impact, on campus and in the world.

An interdisciplinary collaboration of engineers and doctors at Vanderbilt and Columbia Universities has designed a robotic microsurgery system specifically designed to treat bladder cancer, the sixth most common form of cancer in the U.S. and the most expensive to treat.

An interdisciplinary team of mechanical engineers and autism experts at Vanderbilt University have developed an adaptive robotic system and used it to demonstrate that humanoid robots can be powerful tools for enhancing the basic social learning skills of children with autism.

Creating a device out of human cells that simulates brain chemistry is the goal of a $6.4 million grant which is part of major new federal initiative to develop a series of “organs on a chip” designed to improve the drug development process.