An international team of researchers has invented the incredible. It's an "ingestible origami robot" that, once swallowed, makes its way to a patient's stomach to heal a wound, remove a button battery or deliver medicine.

Researchers from MIT, the University of Sheffield, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed and demonstrated a tiny origami robot that will unfold itself from a swallowed capsule and, steered by external magnetic fields, crawl across the stomach wall to perform a set task.

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In a test that can be viewed here on YouTube, the origami robot made from dried pig intestine used in sausages unfolded and flattened itself once the ice capsule encasing it had thawed. Once unfurled, it proceeded to remove a button battery stuck to wall of a simulated stomach.

MIT said there are over 3,500 cases of people (mostly children) swallowing button batteries every year in the United States. 

The new robot builds on a long sequence of papers on origami robots from the research group of Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

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

The robot propels itself inside the esophagus and stomach using what's called a "stick-slip" motion, in which its appendages stick to a surface through friction when it executes a move. The robot slips free again when its body flexes to change its weight distribution.

Researchers tested about a dozen different possibilities for the structural material before settling on the type of dried pig intestine used in sausage casings.

Joining Rus on the paper are first author Shuhei Miyashita, who was a postdoc at CSAIL when the work was done and is now a lecturer in electronics at the University of York, in England; Steven Guitron, a graduate student in mechanical engineering; Shuguang Li, a CSAIL postdoc; Kazuhiro Yoshida of Tokyo Institute of Technology, who was visiting MIT on sabbatical when the work was done; and Dana Damian of the University of Sheffield, in England 

Tagsingestible origami robot, MIT, University of Sheffield, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Daniela Rus