This tiny robot can do surgery from inside your stomach

From driver-less cars to game-playing computers, artificial intelligence technology is developing in great leaps and bounds.

Now, scientists believe they have developed the world's first robot doctor, in the form of a tiny origami robot that can be swallowed in a pill to complete medical tasks without surgery.

Watch this video to see as this robot, made from pig intestine, travels down into a stomach and uses a magnet to remove a button battery. All this is done without the use of any surgery!

Amazing, isn't it?

6 comments

The progress in surgery and other forms of health mending is amazing. This little robot looks promising.

WONDERFUL  IDEA   AS LONG S IT  DOESN'T  MALFUNCTION. Saw it on Tv. too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Just brilliant!

Only wealthy people will be able to use it under the Libs.

 

Did not know the wealthy had Batteries on their menu ... maybe that is why they are thinner.

Absolutely brilliant, small children especially re miniature batteries and some adults too who inadvertently swallow sharp pointed objects e.g. safety pins would be helped by this. Wonder how much they cost and if casualty departments will be able to afford them?

from the original article 

"Inside one of the robot's folds is a tiny magnet that allows it to be controlled using magnetic fields outside the body. And it's this magnet that also collects foreign objects like button batteries.

"Once inside the stomach, the robot could be directed to attach to the battery. It could lift the battery from the stomach coating and then eliminate it through the digestive system," explains researcher Daniela Rus. 

The pill-sized robot is made of the type of dried pig intestine used in sausage casings, and a biodegradable shrink-wrap called Biolefin that shrinks in response to heat. It also allows the robot to fold and contract like origami.

"It's really exciting to see our small origami robots doing something with potential important applications to health care," Rus says.

"This concept is both highly creative and highly practical, and it addresses a clinical need in an elegant way," adds Bradley Nelson, a professor of robotics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. "It is one of the most convincing applications of origami robots that I have seen."



Read more: http://www.essentialkids.com.au/news/current-affairs/lifesaving-invention-can-remove-lithium-batteries-swallowed-by-children-20160523-gp1b0b#ixzz49XVmAhdB 
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such great strides being made in the medical world,    i wonder if this would have the potential to insert stents,    instead of surgery,       the mind boggles at what will come next, 

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