Robot unfolds from ingestible capsule, removes button battery stuck to wall of simulated stomach.
Photo: Melanie Gonick/MIT
“It’s really exciting to see our small origami robots doing something with potential important applications to health care,” says Rus, who also directs MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). “For applications inside the body, we need a small, controllable, untethered robot system. It’s really difficult to control and place a robot inside the body if the robot is attached to a tether.”
According to Forbes, at this year’s International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Stockholm, Sweden, the creators of one tiny robot are revealing its potential to revolutionize medical treatment for certain stomach issues (even if it’s somewhat less impressive-looking than other bots at the event).
Developed by researchers at MIT, the University of Sheffield, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the miniature ‘origami robot’ is designed to be swallowed in a dissolve-able capsule and unfold itself once inside a patient’s stomach, MIT News explains. Then, thanks to technicians’ steering using external magnetic fields and self-driven movements from internal ones, the robot is able to “crawl across the stomach wall” to wrap itself around and remove a button battery swallowed by the patient or patch up a wound in the stomach’s lining.
source: MIT News, Forbes
