Report: Lego kits help scientists replicate bones

Lego is again turning out to be much more than a set of toy bricks, as it is now helping scientists replicate real bones, a tech site reported.

 

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in England are using Lego Mindstorm kits to build crane-like robots to automate the process of creating bones.

 

PC World’s Geektech reported that scientists are looking for a way to replace typical bone implants, usually made of steel and titanium, with something more realistic.

 

But the process used by the team headed by PhD Supervisor Michelle Oyen involves manually dipping an artificial bone sample in beakers of calcium, protein, water, with the samples having to be dipped and moved every minute for an hour.

 

“What makes the lab stand out is how it tries to use inexpensive, household objects to aid in testing, and this is where a few Lego Mindstorms kits came in. Instead of dipping by hand, the researchers built crane-like Lego robots that can automate the process, which allows the researchers to use their free hands to work on other aspects of the projects,” the report said.  

The lab presently owns four of the kits.

 

Of the four, two are for the bone replacement project and the other two are for other projects and tasks around the department such as mixing substances, or as prototypes of equipment to be used in later research projects.

 

PhD student Daniel Strange said the Lego Mindstorms were crucial in allowing them to automate the process.

 

“Originally I had to keep my eyes glued to a stopwach and every minute move a sample from one beaker to the next--for an hour. The Lego Mindstorms move the samples for us, over and over, more precisely and more accurately than what I could do by hand. Because the process has been automated, we can run it for much longer and build samples up over the course of days rather than a single hour,” Strange said.

 

He added the bone-like material is large enough that one can remove it from the underlying surface and hold it in one’s hand and test it mechanically.

 

PC World added that while there is lab equipment that can do the same job, it is more expensive than Mindstorm kits, and usually has limited uses.

 

In contrast, it said the researchers can build and rebuild Lego sets as needed to suit various different projects.

 

“If something is not quite right you can quickly take that bit apart and put it together in a new way. When Michelle bought me the first mindstorms kit, it only took me a day to build a fully working robotic crane. The crane has gone through several revisions since then as other students have tinkered with the design,” Strange said. — RSJ, GMA News