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Ingestible Medical Robots Could Remove Batteries From Stomachs (washingtonpost.com)

"A child swallows a battery every 3 hours," reports a new article in the Washington Post. But now, gurps_npc writes: MIT has developed a small ingestible robot to remove watch batteries that kids swallow. It starts out folded up tight and surrounded by an ice sheath. You swallow it, the ice melts, and it unfolds. Then a doctor uses magnets to direct it to the battery, it wraps itself around the battery, preventing it from leaking acid until you pass it — perhaps a bit faster with the doctor using the magnets to guide it down through your system.
Interestingly, the MIT researchers built their proof-of-concept robot using a durable pork casing -- "the same stuff you might find surrounding a hot dog or kielbasa."

65 comments

  1. There was an old lady that swallowed a fly by hughbar · · Score: 4, Funny

    You know how this ends. The little robot swallows the battery but gets a bit lost. Then another robot-seeking-swallowing-robot is prescribed. Then...

    --
    On y va, qui mal y pense!
    1. Re:There was an old lady that swallowed a fly by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The way this little robot is folded and then frozen in ice, reminds me of how the Inuit used to kill polar bears. They would take a long sliver of bone, sharpened on each end, bend it into a "U" shape, and freeze it in blubber. Then they would leave it on the ice pack where a bear would find it, and swallow it. The blubber would thaw in the bears stomach, the bone would straight out and puncture the stomach. The bear would die of internal bleeding.

    2. Re: There was an old lady that swallowed a fly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is a very human, yet inhumanly, way of dealing with a problem.

    3. Re:There was an old lady that swallowed a fly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      how do they keep the tension on the bone while waiting for the blubber to freeze - and then remove that tension after the blubber has frozen to hold the bone in place?

    4. Re:There was an old lady that swallowed a fly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      how do they keep the tension on the bone while waiting for the blubber to freeze - and then remove that tension after the blubber has frozen to hold the bone in place?

      A piece of string should work. After the blubber is frozen, they could use an awl to poke a small hole in the blubber and cut the string.

    5. Re: There was an old lady that swallowed a fly by Swave+An+deBwoner · · Score: 1

      Trot out that tired old Libertarian agrument again, will you, eh?

    6. Re:There was an old lady that swallowed a fly by godel_56 · · Score: 1

      how do they keep the tension on the bone while waiting for the blubber to freeze - and then remove that tension after the blubber has frozen to hold the bone in place?

      Just tie it with something that will dissolve in the bear's stomach acids.

  2. Someone stop that child from eating batteries by Rubinhood · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Problem solved.

    1. Re:Someone stop that child from eating batteries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... but they are so delicious

    2. Re:Someone stop that child from eating batteries by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 1

      ... but they are so delicious

      Mmm... Voltage...

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    3. Re:Someone stop that child from eating batteries by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · · Score: 1

      At the very least, stop giving that child a battery every three hours.

      --
      "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
    4. Re:Someone stop that child from eating batteries by Mr.CRC · · Score: 1

      It's the current that's yummy. And not dangerous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  3. "A child swallows a battery every 3 hours," by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

    This kid's parents seriously need to get a nanny.

    1. Re:"A child swallows a battery every 3 hours," by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      Or stop buying watches that use batteries. Or just buy magnets and use them as a daily supository. I bet the later would make your suggestions or my first one a lot more probable.

  4. A child swallows a battery every 3 hours by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is just nature telling us where it's going with our bodies, ie. our future is electronic.

    1. Re:A child swallows a battery every 3 hours by PPH · · Score: 1

      You'd think that they could build kids with more efficient processors to extend their battery life.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    2. Re:A child swallows a battery every 3 hours by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm pretty sure they have. Most modern high-efficiency processors get that way by switching to a low-power state where, 99% of the time, they are no more capable than a rice cooker or toaster oven.

    3. Re:A child swallows a battery every 3 hours by vlad30 · · Score: 1

      The one that eat through batteries are probably defective and we should allow the Darwin subroutine to shut them down before they multiply

      --
      Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
  5. Re: Stupid people should die! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All hail the voting boot

  6. Durable pork casing by irrational_design · · Score: 1

    "the MIT researchers built their proof-of-concept robot using a durable pork casing" That was smart of them to make it out of an inedible material.

    1. Re:Durable pork casing by reboot246 · · Score: 1

      My question is what happens when a little Jewish or Muslim kid swallows a battery? Pork casing indeed!

      Those damned anti-Semitic folks at MIT.

    2. Re:Durable pork casing by myowntrueself · · Score: 2

      My question is what happens when a little Jewish or Muslim kid swallows a battery? Pork casing indeed!

      Those damned anti-Semitic folks at MIT.

      Obviously the survival of their children takes priority over their religious beliefs.

      Oh... wait...

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    3. Re:Durable pork casing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jews have a law called Pikuach Nefesh which explicitly overrides basically every other law in Judaism if something is necessary to save human life. It's even written in that the most observant/orthodox jew present should be the one to transgress the necessary laws in order to hit the point home further.

    4. Re:Durable pork casing by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 1

      Similar thing in Islam, only the conditions are even less strict. Forget it's Ramadan and eat something? No problem, just fast the rest of the day. Accidentally eat something that had pork in it? Meh, don't worry about it.

      --
      Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
  7. Trump, Sanders or Clinton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Three candidates Republicans hate

  8. Parents need home surgery kits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The problem is that if a parent brings their child to the hospital because she or he ate a battery, they will brought up on charges for child endangerment because they forced / allowed their children to eat batteries. Their children will be abducted by Child Protective Services, and sent away to the Epstein home for troubled children and sold into the sex slavery business. Their parents will go to jail for 5 years at the expense of 25K per year. Now if there were readily available home DIY surgery and battery removal kits we could avoid this whole problem.

    For those that are saying that parents should just keep batteries out of homes, that would not work. CPS can barge into your home at any time. If they do not see batteries, they will say your family lacks essential electricity, and steal your kids.

    The only solution: Stop having kids.

  9. PorkBot by freeze128 · · Score: 1

    The video shows the robot entering the stomach and grabbing the battery.... Well, THEN WHAT? There are two ways to leave, up or down.

    1. Re:PorkBot by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      The video shows the robot entering the stomach and grabbing the battery.... Well, THEN WHAT? There are two ways to leave, up or down.

      Did you read the whole summary?

    2. Re:PorkBot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The video shows the robot entering the stomach and grabbing the battery.... Well, THEN WHAT? There are two ways to leave, up or down.

      The premium version of the robot gets in through your mouth and leaves through the way down. The cheaper version uses the same hardware, but follows the route the other way around.

    3. Re:PorkBot by Swave+An+deBwoner · · Score: 1

      DeWalt, Milwaukee, Makita, Hitachi, Ridgid, Ryobi, Craftsman, and Porter Cable all are working on getting their own versions of this product to market also. In each case the robot simply drills through the stomach and pops out where the belly button used to be. 3M and Loctite are working on something to patch things up after. Hope this helps. Have a Nice Day!

  10. How fast is this? by PPH · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Steering little pouches around with external magnets while irradiating some poor kid with X-rays (so you can steer the 'robot') sounds time consuming. How does this compare (both in time and cost) with using a GI endoscope? Or just shoving a funnel and some syrup of ipecac down the kid's throat and having him vomit the battery back up?

    This sounds like an interesting but very special purpose procedure and equipment. Better care might be had using commonly available tools.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:How fast is this? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Steering little pouches around with external magnets while irradiating some poor kid with X-rays (so you can steer the 'robot')

      I'm guessing they would use ultrasound.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:How fast is this? by Cow+Jones · · Score: 2

      That's a very good question. An endoscope would have been my first thought as well. I'm not an expert, so I was wondering if the smaller esophagus of the infants who typically swallow batteries would make this more dangerous, but apparently that's not a problem.

      A gastroscopy can be performed on short notice at most hospitals, and doesn't even require the lengthy preparation you would want for a colonoscopy. My impression is that the current system is just a proof of concept, and the full system would be more autonomous. The person in the video says the next step would be to add sensors to reduce/eliminate the need for external control.

      Fun fact: apart from infants, prison inmates are regular customers for gastroscopies. They pack a razor blade in some bread, swallow it, and call a guard. Their expectation is a lengthy hospital stay after a surgery, but in reality they're back in their cells a few hours later.

      --

      Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
    3. Re:How fast is this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They pack a razor blade in some bread, swallow it, and call a guard.

      Such idiocy can be stopped:

      Inmate: I swallowed a razor blade!
      Guard: Don't believe you. That is not possible to do.
      Guard leaves . . .

      Why do inmates even have access to razor blades? They're fearsome weapons in close combat, not something I'd give to a prisoner.

  11. Road by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    House already it!

    "One Day, One Room"

  12. Re:Why libertarianism is evil. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Jesus Christ. Shut up.

  13. I have better idea! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Embrace darwinism. :)

  14. I'll bet... by OpenSourced · · Score: 1

    I'll bet that the same kid that had no problems eating the battery unprompted in the first place, will throw a tantrum when they try to make him swallow that robot-filled ice pill.

    --
    Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
  15. Re:Why libertarianism is evil. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "I don't want to hear the truth about the consequences of my beliefs! If I close my ears, I'll be able to follow my religion like the best of them!"

  16. That's only in US libertarianism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Imagine a perfect libertarian world where a child is required to die from swallowing a toxic item that slowly dissolves into the stomach because their parents cannot afford to pay for a robot that would be available to those parents who can afford it.
    This is why every civilised country needs socialised healthcare.
    Cue the libertarians explaining that it's more important for children to die than for their valuable dollars to be STOLEN from them by the tax man, because extreme ideology uber alles.

    Only in the US has libertarianism become evil, shedding all the higher goals of civilization in favour of me, me, me, and bugger everyone else. The US has perverted that term to denote unbridled capitalism at its very worst, essentially anti-civilization and pro-barbarism. But that's not how it is elsewhere.

    Libertarianism in the rest of the world is very different, generally dismantling the state only so far as to increase individual liberty, but retaining its role as a protector of the liberty of the poor and the weak. This is easy to understand: liberty belongs to everyone, not only the rich and healthy, and that means retaining social care. The general libertarian meme outside of the US is strongly pro-civilization, and not survival of the fittest.

    1. Re:That's only in US libertarianism by Mr.CRC · · Score: 1

      WTF is "US libertarianism?" The US is a borderline totalitarian police and regulatory state.

      How the fuck can you retain liberty and simultaneously put a gun to someone's head if they happen to do something productive, in order to take a cut?

      Capitalism is just private ownership of the means of production. It only defines the character of the system of laws and their enforcement, and the form and means of funding social institutions, to the extent that any involuntary expropriation of wealth or compulsory duties are anti-capitalist, anti-individual, and anti-liberty.

      For ex., it is entirely possible to have a capitalism that is heavily biased toward favoring the rights of individuals over larger aggregations of individuals, such as corporations. To the extent that corporations have limited liability, under capitalism they may have special obligations to "society" (regulation, liquidation of assets when guilty of a crime, etc.) without contradicting the principle of liberty for the individual--because they are not fucking people!

      In short, almost everything that upsets people is directly related to the extent that this fucked up place has strayed *away* from capitalism and individual liberty. Yet they consistently beg for the "solution" to be the complete and total abandonment of individual liberty--in the form of socialism.

    2. Re:That's only in US libertarianism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You sound like a religious man. All religious people claim to have found a silver bullet. Yours is "capitalism".

    3. Re:That's only in US libertarianism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yet they consistently beg for the "solution" to be the complete and total abandonment of individual liberty--in the form of socialism.

      The OP described you accurately when he wrote "extreme ideology uber alles." Your unbridled worship of an idea has made you irrational.

      In stark contradiction of your uninformed and irrational idea that "socialism" means total abandonment of individual liberty, the entirety of Europe is socialist and very happy with it. We know from our daily experience that socialism does not mean abandonment of individual liberty at all, it simply means that our quite varied political systems all share the common characteristic that they care for people instead of letting them die on the streets and letting companies abuse them.

      That's the only impact that socialism need have on liberty, and this observation is based on our actual experience, unlike your theoretical and wholly uninformed view based on nothing. This is why libertarian groups over here understand the important role of socialism within libertarianism. If a libertarian system did not protect the liberty of those in need of help, it would be a worthless system, and barbaric instead of enlightened.

      Inform yourself, otherwise you're gibbering about imagined demons that don't exist.

  17. Now Stanford University... by LordHighExecutioner · · Score: 1

    ...will develop an ingestible robot to remove the ingestible robot that MIT developed to remove batteries that kid swallow.

    1. Re:Now Stanford University... by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      And Harvard will develop a robot to remove the robot that Stanford developed to remove the robot that MIT developed to remove the battery that kids swallow.

      And Oxford will develop a robot ....

      It'll be robots all the way down.

    2. Re: Now Stanford University... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      given how they are inserted, I would be scared if they were all the way up....

  18. Personally... by argStyopa · · Score: 1

    ...I'd say we're long past the point where we need to start STOP saving the babies that eat batteries. Maybe even make them MORE toxic?

    With 7 billion people, we can start losing the stupidest.

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:Personally... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Ironically, those tend to be the smartest babies and the ones who grow up to discover and invent stuff. It's called curiosity. Yeah, it doesn't manifest itself well at that age, but boy does it help later on.

    2. Re:Personally... by argStyopa · · Score: 2

      I'm not really talking about the babies, it's not their fault; I'm talking about their procreators stupid enough to leave button batteries, etc where little children can get them (or leaving them unattended with electronics long enough to get the cover off and batteries out) and then leaving them unobserved long enough to eat the damn things.

      No slam on curiosity; slamming on parents incapable of some basic parental functions.

      --
      -Styopa
    3. Re:Personally... by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      You aren't a parent are you?

      It is amazing how quick things like this happen, and you can't watch the child 24/7.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  19. And not a minute to soon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You'd be surprised how easily one of those gets away from you.

  20. Re: Stupid people should die! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The future is a voting boot stomping on a human face forever. Forever.

  21. Pork Casing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's the thing around your hot dog if your hot dog is of any quality at all. Those unskinned pink things in the US destroy the good names of sausage makers everywhere. Trash.

  22. Why must children's stomachs surround everything? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Keys, change, buttons, now batteries, all gone. Everywhere I look there are children's stomachs. It's an icky squishy mess. Sharpies cannot write on them. The CardKey still works though, it opens the door at work even from inside. I keep mine in a Zip-Lock bag.

  23. Why not just use the magnets ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If the magnets can drag the robot about after it has wrapped itself around the battery, can they not just use the magnets to pull the battery about in the first place ? All the little button batteries in my box of bits are magnetic.

  24. The beginning of a Guinness World Record? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "A child swallows a battery every 3 hours"

  25. Dance! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought it said "Ingestible Musical Robots"

  26. "A child swallows a battery every three hours." by hey! · · Score: 4, Funny

    Somebody should talk to that child's parents.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  27. Robots? by wwalker · · Score: 1

    Can we please stop calling everything "robots"? For something to be a robot it has to be capable of some completely autonomous action. If the only action it can do by itself is "unfold once the ice melts" and then it has to be driven by outside magnets, it's not a robot, it's a remote controlled origami in ice at best.

    1. Re:Robots? by sudon't · · Score: 1

      ...it's a remote controlled origami in ice...

      You will come to regret those words...after the singularity.

      --
      -- sudon't

      Air-ride Equipped

  28. Re:Why must children's stomachs surround everythin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...and THIS is your brain on drugs. Any questions?