(Photo : Gehart Meier/Youtube) Ingestible Snake Robot

A tiny ingestible snake robot is believed to have medicinal value. The robot can slither through the intestines and can view digestive system.

According to LiveScience, a robot called Single Actuator Wave-like robot or SAW is a tiny serpent robot which moves in a wave-like motion that has the ability to travel even in the small intestine. Mechanical Engineer, David Zarrouk at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is the inventor of the snake robot.

Zarrouk makes the external shape of the robot packed with a 2D projection of a rotating helix. Later, he found out that this makes the snake robot move in a continuously moving wave that is reversible in any preferred direction.

Because of the idea that the snake robot can help treat seeing the internal part of the small intestine, scientists improvised a way and developed an ingestible snake to be used for colonoscopies. Time elaborated the importance of the snake robot for it performs tasks of humans even in surgery.

Thus, the newly developed ingestible snake robot is made from a simple design of Zarrouk's idea. However, instead of using a 2D object, researchers innovate the 2D and used a set of interlocking 3D-printed plastic pieces instead. These 3D pieces looked like vertebrae on the snake robot allowing it to move in a fast, cross, and even rough terrain.

The ingestible snake robot will carry a tiny camera that will allow the surgeons to see the inside of a person's large and small intestine. Because of this, the snake robot should be suitable for biological applications and will not get in stuck in the curves of the intestines.

When everything gets ready for the ingestible snake robot, the researchers will test the robot in living creatures first like pigs before it can switch to a human for a test. Currently, the robot is somehow bigger than the small intestines and smaller than the stomach valve. Researchers are finding a way to make the ingestible robot easy to be swallowed by the human.