COMPUTATIONAL TASKS IN MEDICAL NANOROBOTICS - Bio-Inspired and Nanoscale Integrated Computing - page 418

hallucinogenic drugs, or other bioactive substances are present (or absent).
Nanorobots might be restricted to operations only when blood pressure
moves above or below certain preset thresholds, or when respiration or
heart rate is too fast or too slow, or within a defined range. Measured
progesterone level could serve as one indicator of pregnancy, and a high
blood concentration of the hormone relaxin could indicate that the adult
patient has recently undergone childbirth. Other devices might be pro-
grammed to operate only during periods of sexual arousal (as determined
operationally by a set of critical body-wide physiological parameters), or
only when the patient is hungry, or is having an epileptic seizure, or is in
REM-phase sleep, or only when the patient is talking, sneezing, defecating,
or urinating (all of which have unique and distinct physiological adjuncts
that can be detected, measured, and acted upon by a sufficiently discrimi-
nating acoustic macrosensing system [1ba]). Another functional protocol
that might be useful in some cases is a determination as to whether the
patient was functionally ''alive'' or ''dead''—as provisionally determined
by a molecular analog to the Karnofsky Performance Score [69] using a
constellation of sensor readings from an in vivo nanorobot population
including blood velocity, tissue oxygenation or carbonation levels, glucose
depletion, monitoring of mechanical body noises and body temperature,
presence of chemical poisons or forensic biochemical death markers,
absence of electrical or other neural activity, dysfunctional ionic balances,
and so forth.
3. Situational. Nanorobots could be programmed with narrowly specialized
situational protocols driven by complex multiple sensor data designed to
detect rare events. For example, one situational theater might be defined as
the simultaneous receipt of sensor data from nanorobots stationed
throughout the body indicating (1) high concentrations of adrenalin in
the bloodstream, (2) a sudden transition from a gravity-detected to a low-
gravity (e.g., free-fall) environment as recorded by acceleration and gravity
sensors, (3) whistling noises detected by nanorobots stationed at the
cochlear nerves, (4) continuous rotational movements detected by the
vestibular apparatus, (5) drop in ambient air pressure in the lungs, and
(6) kinesthetic sensors detecting flailing motions of arms and legs. The
simultaneous occurrence of all these sensory events might suggest that the
patient was falling through the air, and might provide the unique theater of
operation of nanorobots designed to automatically respond to this event.
Other more common situations might also be recognized using situational
protocols. For instance, determination that the patient is wearing clothing,
and the approximate extent of coverage of the epidermis by that clothing,
may be detectable by a sophisticated whole-body nanorobot population by
sampling dermal, neural, pressure, and temperature receptor output, by
measuring variations in transdermal light transmission, or by mapping
variations in sweat gland cell metabolic rate [1bo].