Gut Bot

(((No matter how quease-inspiring this is, it's worth it just to have the neologism "gut bot." It's like some kinda awesome nanotech blue-collar work: "yeah, I herd gut bots.")))

(((Let's hope the Storm Worm boys don't get their hands on a "gut bot net," as illicit command over our planetary entrails could really make it hit the fan.)))

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/21153/?nlid=1244&a=f

Link: Technology Review: Controlling a Gut Bot's Position .

For the past few years, medical researchers have been trying to develop ways to peer painlessly inside the human body, from a swallowable sensor to a magnetically controlled image-snapping capsule. Now, a group at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has shown that a tiny capsule robot is adhesive enough to anchor inside an intestine and yet gentle enough not to tear soft tissue.

The anchoring robot would be swallowed like a normal pill and move through the body until it reached the gut. Then a doctor, using a wireless control, would tell the robot when to expand its legs and anchor. It would be good not only for snapping images, but also potentially for biopsies, drug delivery, heat treatment, and other treatment applications.

(((If it isn't freaky enough that it sticks in your gut, it's based on insect biomimicry.)))

"Sitti and his lab group looked to beetles, which secrete oil-like liquids along their foot hairs in order to stick securely to surfaces. They coated their robot's feet with a similarly viscous liquid to "help get more adhesion by giving them a surface-tension component," says Sitti."

(((Of course there's video.)))