NEWS
NANOTECHNOLOGY
Magnets to treat sepsis
COMMENT Robots gear up
Graham Mackrell | managing director, Harmonic Drive UK
The industrial robotics market is expected to be worth $71.7bn by 2023, according to new research. The research, from business intelligence firm MarketsandMarkets, shows that the industrial robotics market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.6% in the next six years. The rapid growth is affecting markets across the board, from automotive and electronics to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.
Although the highest demand is for articulated robots, other types including cartesian, parallel and collaborative are also growing rapidly. The main drivers come from increased investment in
ANTHONY KING
A purification technology relying on nanoparticles aims to tackle sepsis, one of the top 10 leading causes of death. Sepsis is an inflated immune response triggered by an infection. Almost a third of patients who develop sepsis in intensive care will die as a result. Swiss start-up Hemotune plans to
treat sepsis by purifying a patient’s blood outside their body, by using magnetic nanoparticles that lock onto sepsis-causing toxins such as endotoxin, present in the blood of about 50% of sepsis patients. The approach involves an add-on
device to a dialysis machine connected to the patient’s blood circulation. Inside the machine, nanomagnets stick to endotoxin in the blood and are then separated out via a magnetic force. Purified endotoxin-free blood is fed back to the patient. A paper currently under review reports a way of measuring tiny amounts of nanomagnets in the blood as it leaves the machine, providing useful safety data ahead of first-in-man trials planned for 2020. ‘Our approach is to remove
inflammatory mediators from the blood that cause an over-reaction by the immune system and shock,’ says Lukas Langenegger, project leader at Hemotune. ‘By removing them, we can stabilise the patient and reduce mortality and associated economic costs.’
Hemotune reported on the promise of its purification technology to capture high molecular weight compounds from blood in 2015 (J. Nanobiotechnol., doi: 10.1186/s12951-015-0110-8). In 2016, the startup won ca£100,000 in seed investment from Swiss venture investment programme Venture Kick. Researchers at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich performed the first magnetic blood purification on an animal model in 2013 (Nanoscale, doi: 10.1039/c3nr02468g). Studies on fresh human blood contaminated with bacterial endotoxin removed some of the toxin using cobalt iron nanoparticles, with a particle recovery rate > 99.8% (Adv. Healthcare Mater., doi: 10.1002/adhm.201200358). However, sepsis expert Mervyn
Singer at Imperial College London says it is ‘simplistic’ to give endotoxin to an animal and then filter it out. ‘Real life isn’t like that,’ he says; there are many other toxins involved and also pro- inflammatory compounds generated by the patient. ‘Too much emphasis has been placed on endotoxin in recent years. It is one amongst many bits of gram-negative bacteria that are recognised as alien by the host.’ Even if you could filter out pro-inflammatory compounds, he says it would be essential to ensure that not all these compounds are wiped out, but instead are brought to an acceptable level. There are 19m cases of severe sepsis
each year and 5m fatalities. It is the most expensive condition in hospitals.
automation in a growing number of industries, and rising demand from small and medium sized businesses in developing countries. Automation in the food and beverage sector, for example, has seen the increased use of robots in pick and place applications where advancing gripper technology, combined with improvements in motors, gears, sensors and artificial intelligence software, means that robots can carefully handle food items such as lettuce heads of various sizes. Shrinking product lifecycles in the consumer electronics
market is also driving growth for desktop collaborative robots in the small-parts assembly sector. Devices such as phones, tablets, wearable fitness trackers
and smart watches that used to be updated once every few years now have regular 12-monthly cycles. As a result, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) now have to start production planning for future products as soon as the current model is launched. In terms of the global market, the Asia Pacific region is
expected to own the highest share of the robotics market over the next decade. This can be attributed to various factors that drive down the cost of production, including lower wages, closer proximity to raw materials, a less stringent taxation environment and economies of scale. We can expect to see strong demand from countries including China, Korea and India. Although the future looks bright, the demand is causing
stress on supply chains now. According to figures by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), every member of the G7 countries has seen productivity suffer since the 2008 financial crisis, with the UK being affected twice as hard. Countries like Germany, the US and France are leading the way in terms of output per hour worked. At Harmonic Drive, we have also seen a surge in demand
for our high precision gears as a result of the demand for robots. The six elements of our precision gears — zero backlash, accuracy, repeatability, high torque, compactness and low weight — make them ideal for increasingly high precision automation environments. As the market continues to grow, OEMs and business
leaders need to refocus their efforts and gear up to meet the demands of the robotics market. For more visit
https://harmonicdrive.de/en/home/
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JOHN LEYBA/GETTY
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