A small and lightweight robot applying the "origami" structure has been improved to evolve into an "Ingestible Origami Robot" that removes accidentally swallowed button cells from the body

Various robots that combine strength and lightness by applying "origami" technology are being studied. Researchers at MIT have already adopted the origami structure, are compact, lightweight and move freely freelyOrigami Robot"Although it announced, newly, a button battery which opened and closed in the body and inadvertently drank a robot which removes it from the body"Ingestible Origami Robot"We are opening a demonstration of this.

Ingestible origami robot | MIT News
http://news.mit.edu/2016/ingestible-origami-robot-0512

By using origami, you can understand what kind of robot the small robot "Origami Robot" which can obtain propulsive force is by seeing the following movie.

Robot Origami: Robot self-folds, walks, and completes tasks - YouTube


Attaching objects such as thin metal pieces to liquid ......


It starts to automatically collapse ... ...


I took a specific structure.


This 0.33 gram, a small robot about 1 cm square is equipped with a neodymium magnet, it can vibrate and proceed by changing external magnetic field.


We can carry things weighing twice the weight of their own weight.


Origami Robot, whose movement can be controlled by the magnetic field, can also climb a slope with a strong driving force ......


You can swim in the water.


In addition, it has biodegradability to make it dissolve in liquid.


Origami Robot is a robot made by MIT's Miyashita Shuhei et al. Team.


It can be controlled with a neodymium magnet surrounded by a circle.


Origami Robot, small and light, is expected to be applied to drug delivery systems etc. because it can carry objects inside the body.


And Research Group of MIT, University of Sheffield and Tokyo Institute of Technology improved Origami Robot so that foreign bodies that have been ingested can be removed from the body.


Ingestible origami robot - YouTube


This is "Ingestible Origami Robot". It is made with pig intestines. It is like a piece of paper on the left in the dry state, but if it contains moisture it changes to a shape like the right, it transforms into a robot that vibrates to obtain propulsive force.


An experiment was carried out by inserting Ingestible Origami Robot packed in an ice capsule into a model imitating the human stomach.


When the ice melts in the model of the stomach mixed with lemon juice in water to reproduce stomach acid ......


It is the mechanism that origami robot is born.


According to MIT, there are 3,500 accidents per year in the US alone, accidentally swallowing button batteries. Although batteries often go out of the body together with bodily exudates, there is a danger of accidents that some of them react with acid and stick to the inner wall of the internal organs, or the batteries melt in the body and the contents leak There was a demand for development of technology to remove button batteries that were ingested accidentally.


Ingestible Origami Robot is sucked into a button battery accidentally ingested by the built-in neodymium magnet and united.


By vibrating, we succeeded in peeling off the button cell sticking to the inner wall of the stomach.


Professor Daniel Lass of MIT plans to install a sensor in Ingestible Origami Robot in the future. Furthermore, it seems to be a policy to improve so as to make it move without depending on the magnetic field.