Improved locomotion for the HeartLander robot for injection of an anti-remodeling hydrogel

HeartLander is a miniature mobile robot designed to crawl on the surface of the heart and is well-suited to deliver myocardial injections. It was previously shown that with an added cooling and injection system, the crawler could perform controlled injections of a thermally sensitive anti-remodeling hydrogel on a chicken breast, but at the expense of its computer controlled steering due to the stiffness of the added components. To restore the locomotion performance, we have replaced these components with more flexible materials and demonstrated the ability to crawl and perform controlled injections on chicken breast muscle ex vivo.