Slashdot Mirror
The Diagnostic 'Bugbot'
Roland Piquepaille writes "The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that a robot combined with a swallowable camera could give doctors a better look inside the small intestine. This medical robot, dubbed 'bugbot,' is being developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in its NanoRobotics Laboratory. It will measure less than 800 nanometers in diameter and will transmit thousands of images during its trip inside yourself with its embedded camera. With the six legs attached to the microrobot, CMU researchers want to give more control to camera operators, such as coming back to a suspected lesion. This robot should be ready for human inspection within 2 to 3 years and opens the way for future nanorobots. This overview contains more details about this project."
at the end of the food chute are going to look rough in the editing room.
I'd heard that someone had developed a device like this a few years back, but the thing that I wondered about was control. I guess the early models were the ones that I had heard about, because they didn't have any external operational control.
I hope the bug pulls its legs out before the big exit.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Well, having just experienced my very first colonoscopy I must say this development leaves me with mixed feelings.
One one hand this "bug" is way smaller than what explored my nether regions.
On the other hand the drugs that they gave me at the clinic while doing the procedure were very good!
Three Squirrels
I have a few points of contention with Slashdot. Wait! Before you dismiss me as gutless, hear me out. Slashdot has only one goal: to waste hours and hours in fruitless conferences and meetings. Slashdot is an inspiration to predaceous bureaucrats everywhere. They panegyrize its crusade to project a stream of disreputable images of death, sex, disaster, material goods, celebrities, and other fixtures in a mock-Olympian firmament and, more importantly, they don't realize that Slashdot's opinion is that some people deserve to feel safe while others do not. Of course, opinions are like sphincters: we all have them. So let me tell you my opinion. My opinion is that I frequently wish to tell Slashdot that its operatives are profoundly influenced by what it says and does. But being a generally genteel person, however, I always bite my tongue. Take a good, close look at yourself, Slashdot. What you'll probably find is that you're disloyal. If we don't address the legitimate anger, fear, and alienation of people who have been mobilized by Slashdot because they saw no other options for change right now, then Slashdot's double standards will soon start to metastasize until they make life less pleasant for us.
I may be beating a dead horse here, but I do want to point out that Slashdot sometimes uses the word "galvanocauterization" when describing its snow jobs. Beware! This is a buzzword designed for emotional response. The last time I told Slashdot's spokesmen that I want to hinder the power of ostentatious primates like Slashdot, they declared in response, "But a plausible excuse is a satisfactory substitute for performance." Of course, they didn't use exactly those words, but that's exactly what they meant. My purpose is to reinforce what is best in people. Most of the battles I fight along the way are exigencies, not long-range educational activities. Nevertheless, almost every day, Slashdot outreaches itself in setting new records for arrogance, deceit, and greed. It's definitely breathtaking to watch it.
Here's some food for thought: Slashdot's vituperations are not pedantic treatises expressing theories or extravaganzas dealing in fables or fancies. They are substantial, sober outpourings from the very soul of narcissism. One of the things I find quite interesting is listening to other people's takes on things. For instance, I recently overheard some folks remark that I am not fooled by Slashdot's impolitic and eristic rhetoric. I therefore gladly accept the responsibility of notifying others that we must reach out to people with the message that to deny this is to deny science, let alone the evidence of one's own powers of observation. We must alert people of that. We must educate them. We must inspire them. And we must encourage them to seek liberty, equality, and fraternity. On a completely different tack, Slashdot somehow manages to maintain a straight face when saying that the average working-class person can't see through its chicanery. I, not being one of the many domineering, insensitive rapscallions of this world, am greatly grieved by this occurrence of falsehood and fantastic storytelling which is the resultant of layers of social dishevelment and disillusionment amongst the fine citizens of a once organized, motivated, and cognitively enlightened civilization. Slashdot's objective is clear: to inspire a recrudescence of oppressive fatuity sooner than you think. Listen carefully: The biggest difference between me and Slashdot is that Slashdot wants to confiscate other people's rightful earnings. I, on the other hand, want to build a better world, a cleaner world, a safer world, and a saner world.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of individuals and organizations, many of whom may seem innocent at first glance, who secretly want to use rock music, with its savage, tribal, orgiastic beat, to put the prisoners in charge of running the prison. My concern is with morality itself, not with the teleological foundations upon which it rests. Now that that's cleared up, I'll continue with what I wa
800 nanometers seems way too small. That's on the order of one wavelength of visible light. I think someone got the units wrong.
And the knowledge that they fear is a weapon to be used against them...
Now that's entertainment!
... you've been bugbotted...
800nm diameter? That doesn't make any sense! 800nm is close to visible light wavelengths. Could be tricky to design a camera when the wavelengths you want to record are the same size as the camera.
Hmm, and a quick scan the linked articles don't really mention 800nm.... Was someone just pulling that number out of their ass, roland?
And please stop linking to your summaries of the artice, which simply cut'n'paste the first linked article with a few bits of filler.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
it gets stuck? Morpheus doesn't come around often, and I don't know how much porn surfing it takes to be counted as "The One" for Morpheus to start looking for you.
I think they're disguising this tool's true function.
Joking on this honerable day celebrating the surrender of our rights; henceforth known as Memorial Day.
I am the nightmare of nightmares.
This robot should be ready for human consumption within 2 to 3 years and opens the way for future nanorobots.
At least.. I hope that's how it goes in..
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Seems like most of the critters that live inside the intestines are worm-shaped, not bug-shaped, so I'd think you'd want to build some sort of robotic worm or snake.
http://www.givenimaging.com/ make the only existing swallowable endoscopy camera on the market, and yes, the drugs for conventional endoscopy are a solid hit.
I've had a colonoscopy (I had colon cancer when I was 34; it's cool, I'm all better now) and they make well sure that you are all 'cleaned out' prior to the procedure. I'm sure it's the same with this.
First, you take a powerful laxative. This tastes like toxic 7-up. Make sure your bathroom is well-stocked.
Then the next day you drink a GALLON of electrolytic fluid (like soapy gatorade) over the course of a couple of hours. You will have nuclear diarrhea for a while. This is way worse (the diarrhea) than you get from the chemotherapy (depending on what drugs you get; I got leukovorin and 5FU).
Even with all of this, swallowing the camera would be way better than the old way. Let me just say that the cable on the camera they use on the other end is over 7 feet long. I'm not even 6 feet tall. *shudders*
What bug crawled up your ass and discharged?
...with it...uhm still up there... It'll look for an entrypoint/penishole to crawl into and continue its parasitic spread of ...stuff!
Maybe the only way to remove the bug is to try to fuck
I am the nightmare of nightmares.
This eye-robot, on its less-than-fantastic voyage, should soon thereafter be able to retrieve tiny tissue samples, too. Locomotion can't be much easier than prospecting...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
http://www.engadget.com/entry/4351460713635569/
t ml
http://www.devicelink.com/mem/archive/05/04/004.h
Finally! Robots inside us. Next step: Nanites!... Tho i'd rather have midichlorians.
Tordek, Dwarven Warrior - Juegos de Rol en Argentina
I would think that a spring-loaded double-screw drive would be better than legs. The front half of the probe would have a right-handed screw and the back-half of the unit woud have a left-handed screw. A motor would drive the front half relative to the back-half -- screwing the front half to pull the unit forward and unscrewing the back half to also push the unit forward. A set of spring arms on the front half would gently rub against the intestinal wall and use a mutli-spectral scanner to do a quick check/map of the tissue as it moves through the gut. The unit could also have an ultrasonic transponder to signal its location in the body.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I think most of you are aware of the controversy surrounding regular Slashdot article submitter Roland Piquepaille. For those of you who don't know, please allow me to bring forth all the facts. Roland Piquepaille has an online journal (I refuse to use the word "blog") located at http://www.primidi.com/ [primidi.com]. It is titled "Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends". It consists almost entirely of content, both text and pictures, taken from reputable news websites and online technical journals. He does give credit to the other websites, but it wasn't always so. Only after many complaints were raised by the Slashdot readership did he start giving credit where credit was due. However, this is not what the controversy is about.
Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends serves online advertisements through a service called Blogads, located at www.blogads.com. Blogads is not your traditional online advertiser; rather than base payments on click-throughs, Blogads pays a flat fee based on the level of traffic your online journal generates. This way Blogads can guarantee that an advertisement on a particular online journal will reach a particular number of users. So advertisements on high traffic online journals are appropriately more expensive to buy, but the advertisement is guaranteed to be seen by a large amount of people. This, in turn, encourages people like Roland Piquepaille to try their best to increase traffic to their journals in order to increase the going rates for advertisements on their web pages. But advertisers do have some flexibility. Blogads serves two classes of advertisements. The premium ad space that is seen at the top of the web page by all viewers is reserved for "Special Advertisers"; it holds only one advertisement. The secondary ad space is located near the bottom half of the page, so that the user must scroll down the window to see it. This space can contain up to four advertisements and is reserved for regular advertisers, or just "Advertisers".
Before we talk about money, let's talk about the service that Roland Piquepaille provides in his journal. He goes out and looks for interesting articles about new and emerging technologies. He provides a very brief overview of the articles, then copies a few choice paragraphs and the occasional picture from each article and puts them up on his web page. Finally, he adds a minimal amount of original content between the copied-and-pasted text in an effort to make the journal entry coherent and appear to add value to the original articles. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now let's talk about money. Visit BlogAds to check the following facts for yourself. As of today, December XX 2004, the going rate for the premium advertisement space on Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends is $375 for one month. One of the four standard advertisements costs $150 for one month. So, the maximum advertising space brings in $375 x 1 + $150 x 4 = $975 for one month. Obviously not all $975 will go directly to Roland Piquepaille, as Blogads gets a portion of that as a service fee, but he will receive the majority of it. According to the FAQ, Blogads takes 20%. So Roland Piquepaille gets 80% of $975, a maximum of $780 each month. www.primidi.com is hosted by clara.net (look it up at Network Solutions ). Browsing clara.net's hosting solutions, the most expensive hosting service is their Clarahost Advanced ( link ) priced at £69.99 GBP. This is roughly, at the time of this writing, $130 USD. Assuming Roland Piquepaille pays for the Clarahost Advanced hosting service, he is out $130 leaving him with a maximum net profit of $650 each month. Keeping your website registered with Network Solutions cost $34.99 per year, or about $3 per month. This leaves Roland Piquepaille with $647 each month. He may pay for additional services related to his online journal, but I was unable to find any evidence of this.
All of the above are cold, hard, verifiable facts, except where stated otherwise. Now I will give
It's a suppository!
An ontopic goatse article.
I'm confused.
How can something the with of two fingers be considered "nano-technology" ???
-- Duder
Swallowable cameras already exist; the 800nm diameter robot is still on the drawing board; it would have to be that small to be injected, not swallowed, and might be used for drug deliver or other tasks.
Given that the gate length of 1 transistor for VLSI production technologies is currently greater than 800nm.
Vote for Pedro
am I the only one who was reminded of the "Bug" in the Matrix?
"such as coming back to a suspected lesion." I don't know what my mind is today. I thought that said lesbian.
... In other headlines, "Medicinal remedy could cure all forms of cancer."
Bored and don't know what to do for a party? Intestine Rally Championships Line up a bunch of contestants Issue each with a Nanobot, laxetive and a bucket. Tune it into the big screen and your away.
I'm scheduled tomorrow morning 10:30 CST for the mighty Butt Periscope(tm). I wouldn't push mine back even if they had a two week delivery timeframe, but this medical stuff moves *way* too slowly for my taste
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Hey, to me, 'bug' means 'error'!
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
.. suppose it gets stuck?
I don't why she swallowed a fly,
Perhaps she'll die.
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and wiggled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly -
Perhaps she'll die.
Yes
"Cats like plain crisps"
They'll have them up inside so many girls' holes, it'll be an epidemic. They'll be putting them up inside virgins, and have the camera looking outward through the hymen into some guys fucking eye.
I'm not even remotely kidding. You watch. It'll happen.
Gives a new meaning to debugging...
Sitti, Lebovitz and Appasamy suggested it may someday be possible to use a legged camera introduced through the anus as a substitute for traditional colonoscopy.
Suncoast Linux - Sarasota, FL
Frankly, given the build-up I'd heard, I was disappointed at how unpleasant the whole procedure was not . Yeah, going a day without solid food beforehand was a nuisance, and the induced diarrhea (and the accompanying lack of sleep, since my procedure was first thing in the morning, and the last dose of laxative has to be taken 5 hours prior) wasn't exactly fun. But by far the most unpleasant part of the whole experience was the mundane discomfort of repeated wiping. (Tip: instead of TP, use your bathtub as a bidet and a plush towel to dry off.)
The procedure itself? The drugs they give you send you so far into la-la land that it won't bother you, and the guys who find the very notion of someone exploring their rectum discomforting on a homophobic psychological level will be relieved that they won't even remember the experience. It's a bit like a drugged date rape with signed consent forms. :) Seriously, there was absolutely no residual pain, and a few days later it's as if it never happened... except for the fact that I now know that my colon is healthy, rather than hoping and wondering.
The bottom line (no pun intended): If there's any history of colon cancer in your family and you're over 40, or your doctor recommends it for any other reason, don't wait for nanobots or whatever to get your colon checked out. Better to have a camera shoved up your ass now than to have your colon turned into a semi-colon and get put on chemo a few years from now.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
instead of posting this long-winded rant with every Piquepelle story, could you simply provide a link, in the unlikely event there is anyone left who wants to read it?
The PillCam is a small capsule containing a camera, light, battery, and wireless transmitter that sends images to a receiver belt worn by the patient as the capsule tumbles its way through the intestinal tract.
The only thing new offered in this bit of "news", is the thought of attempting to put legs on the capsule and overcome the natural peristaltic movement of the capsule through the intestines by stabbing the intestinal walls to move around and shoot more images of something interesting.
It's something I view as a very questionable long shot at best, given the additional power required to actively position the thing, and the notion that having pointy legs sticking out inside one's intestines might not be the safest way to investigate intestinal problems.
George swallows the pill, but it goes into a mummy on display at the local museum, and the doctor thinks he's dying.. ahh the Jetson's prior-art strikes again.
meh
However, there are two important caveats:
First, the current technology takes snapshots at intervals during its descent through the bowel, which can take hours or days. Necessarily, this skips regions of bowel since the shots are not contiguous, and are randomly oriented. This is fine for diffuse (i.e. widespread) bowel disease, since you'll catch most of what you need to see. But scarce, discrete lesions like cancers and polyps may get missed.
This could be solved by a maneuverable camera proposed in the OP, but this leads to the second limitation: since the bowel is actually fairly long (a few meters), there is a TON of images to review, which typically takes several hours by trained personnell. This is OK for a few studies per week, but doesn't scale well. What's more, having a maneuverable camera would make this worse, since a real-time review would have to take as long as the transit time through bowel, which can be very long. I pity the person who has to sit there and steer the camera around for dozens of hours.
A few posts are hopeful this will replace the colonoscopy, but for the reasons mentioned above, this is unlikely, at least not in the near future.
I for one welcome our new injested nanorobot overlords.
"Buttbot" more appropriate ?
Well then, Good News! It's a suppository.
As already mentioned before, wavelengths for light ] are on the order of several hundred nanometers.
Even if we had the technology, it would be STUPID to make a camera on the scale of hundreds of nanometer.
HOWEVER, a brief reading of one of the university links mentions that the robot is 800um (800 MICROmeters).
Clearly the poster is American. Everyone else knows there is a helluva of difference between NANO and MICRO.
The robot is actually one THOUSAND times bigger than stated in the summary.
when the developers claim that the QA department is refusing to sign off on the build because they have a bug up their ass we can take their comment literally?
You certainly wouldn't bother taking them for recreation, put it that way...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Not everyone sees those wavelengths, some people have limited vision.
However I myself, along with my mother and brother have the ability to see UV so I'm offended that you lump us in with your pathetic minimalist vision!
I have personally been tested at the University Of Alberta and am able to see UVA and some UVB.
What does this mean? Not much really, I lead a normal life dispite my super powers. Actualy I know another gentleman who also has this genetic difference so it's not really super.
We see many materials differently than other people when under halogen or natural sources.
Oh and it makes playing laser tag a lot easier.
As the bowel prep part of the job hasn't changed, it's just a matter of not having to be sedated and having the hassle of having to be driven home afterwards.
If you're sufficiently conscious, make sure you ask for the pictures afterwards :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This is uncomfortable and humiliating.
If only it could be made in a form of a suppository!
You can't handle the truth.
they had bugbot or was that bugbombs
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
reverse buttcam !
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
Neither man nor battery operated machine is going anywhere near my ass!
I wonder what software it runs and what happens if it crashes!? Could be rather painful!
Someone should really start a campaign of informing all the sites he steals from every time he does it. Eventually, surely one of them would sue him and his gravy-train would come to a screeching halt.
Anyone ever read "Prey?" I just finished it this weekend, then this story pops up on /. Too awesome for words. "Mommy? why is the robot eating me?"
b _rdr_fc/002-0807562-9362450?_encoding=UTF8&p=S001# reader-page
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0061015725/ref=si
The world according to SComps
I saw this on the Science Channel already.
A virtual colonoscopy is probably a much better option. You still need to take the laxatives, but there is no real colonoscopy. Instead a 3d image is generated from a CT scan. The doctor can then do a virtual colonoscopy on his pc. Advantages: Takes less time Not an invasive procedure No sedation needed Disadvantages: Not possible to take biopsies during the procedure, so in some cases a real colonoscopy will be needed afterwarts.
Please have marketting send my check to . . .
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Well, if these devices are sufficiently small, they will ultimately wind up in the potty (unless you're going to filter your poo), and then in the sewage treatment plant, and then in the discharge, and then either in the landfill or the discharge, which will then be in the water supply, then potentially inside someone or something else. Maybe we can start stamping them with "log into www.whatever.com to see where I've been" like I've seen on a bunch of dollar bills recently.
... cue visions of 'Alien' and a bugbot erupting from your chest...
I've had a colonoscopy (many years ago, and unfortunately without the la-la drugs that some report being given to make it better), and it was *really* uncomfortable... but this bug thing crawling through me from end-to-end sounds like a bad dream... or a bad horror/scifi movie...
...that said, either way is definitely better than colon cancer ...
note to self: don't attend ANY parties hosted by aminad... ;-)
But by far the most unpleasant part of the whole experience was the mundane discomfort of repeated wiping. (Tip: instead of TP, use your bathtub as a bidet and a plush towel to dry off.)
You might also try buying a packet of the flushable baby-wipes. I picked some up when I was going through a bout of discomfort and I've never looked back. You only really need one per visit and the material is durable enough that you can even insert a corner of it and swab out the inside.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.