Ingestible Snake Robot Could Slither Through Your Intestines
The SAW robot could one day be miniaturized and sent to slither through the intestines to provide views of the interior spaces. A tiny, swallowable robot that snakes its way through the small intestines could one day be used to actively visualize the digestive system. The robot , called SAW (single actuator wave-like robot), moves in a wave-like motion and can travel through the extremely squishy environment of the small intestine. "The external shape of the robot is a 2D projection of a rotating helix. The result is a continuously moving wave. We can simply reverse the direction by reversing the direction of rotation of the motor," said one of the robot's inventors, David Zarrouk, a mechanical engineer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Crawling through intestines The team was hoping to create an ingestible robot that could carry a camera through the small intestines, which could ultimately be used for colonoscopies . Currently, colonoscopies