Researchers from the University of Sheffield, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and MIT have teamed up to demonstrate a new foldable origami robot that can be ingested and then controlled inside the stomach to treat internal wounds or remove things like button batteries from the stomach. Button batteries are at times swallowed by children and can cause great injury if left alone. The ingestible robot starts in a digestible capsule that is swallowed.

Once in the stomach, that capsule dissolves and the robot unfolds itself and can then be steered by an external magnetic field to a specific location inside the stomach where it can treat injuries. “It’s really exciting to see our small origami robots doing something with potential important applications to health care,” says Daniela 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.”

more at Source: Origami robot is able to unfold and treat stomach injuries when swallowed – SlashGear