Surgery By Robot, Swallowing a Surgeon

December 1st, 2008

Eventually you may be able to have surgery simply by swallowing a pill shaped robot. Paolo Dario, Professor of Biomedical Robotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, Italy explained that a new era of medical technology could involve the use of bio micro-bots.

Like the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, ETH Zurich is also a part of the EU’s ARES research project (Assembling Reconfigurable Endoluminal Surgical System), an array of robotics experts from four European higher education institutions. These researchers want to make micro-robots usable for medical procedures. The plan is that, in the future, robots no bigger than a conventional capsule will perform a series of tasks in the gastro-intestinal tract, e.g. a gastroscopy or a tissue biopsy.

These micro-bots have actually existed for over 7 years, but they are passive. They have done the duty of investigating the gastro-intestinal tract trying to catch symptoms like spider glue traps, but they have not been able to control the devices. Now they may have control over them. ARES scientists are currently developing micro-robots with controllable insect-like legs with which the “robot pills” would be able to move around in the stomach. Other groups are working on special devices for tissue biopsy. In the future, such instruments could be used to make a precise examination of damaged regions in the gastro-intestinal tract while at the same time taking tissue samples for subsequent investigation.

Wow…just wow. Although the actual use of such systems is a bit off, this kind of thing could help reduce some risks that are involved in simple invasive surgeries. Leaving not scars even. To read more about possible applications, and the future of robot surgery click here.