The Pill Robot Is Coming (bloomberg.com)

Bloomberg has an article on a new project that MIT's Daniela Rus has been working on. They have developed a "robot," squeezed into an inch-long, 0.09-ounce pill, but it "unfolds like an origami after it's swallowed". This robot can be guided with a tiny magnet to remove a foreign object from the stomach or treat a wound by administering medication, the report says. The equipment to manipulate the robot is pricey, but its own components cost less than $100. The article talks about the next step in this project: Rus and her team have tested the robot in a silicon-molded prototype stomach and are seeking approval from MIT's animal care committee to try it in pigs. She says they're also looking to raise more money. "The experiments they've been doing are very promising," says Ken Goldberg, a robotics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Until now, he says, "nothing has been able to essentially walk inside the body."

Comments

You Mean Robot Pill.

[zenlessyank]

Eat me from the inside.

Re:Will be billed at $1000-$5000 per use

[captaindomon]

What the market will bear, of course. Prices are not set on "what value do you put on owning that little robot". They are put on "What value to you place in having that sharp or poisonous metal shard removed from your digestive tract before it kills you". Willingness to pay, my friend, based on the service performed, not on the value of the tools.

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly

[tobiasly]

FTFA:

The only thing a patient would have to do, in theory, is swallow — a bit like gulping down a spider to catch a wayward fly.

Probably not the most confidence-inducing analogy, as our childhood nursery rhymes have already taught us how that one turns out...