Wormbot Crawls Through Your Intestines

holy_calamity writes "NewScientist is reporting on a new robot modeled on a worm to crawl through your intestines made by European researchers. The plan is to replace endoscopes, but from the look of the videos these things are too scary to ever be allowed into hospitals."

Look, maybe you kids should read the article...

[searleb]

Quoted from the text:

Doctors currently explore the gut using endoscopes, which have to be fed through the body, or "camera pills" that must be swallowed by a patient.

A pill capable of wriggling through the gut on its own could be a valuable tool, says Andrew Gardner, an independent medical imaging expert at University College London.

"Capsules can show you places nothing else can, but you can't stop or slow down when you get to a point of interest," he told New Scientist.

Boon for diagnostics

[Somnus]

Right now scopes can't go into the small intenstines -- this would fill a significant gap in present diagnostic capability. Currently, wireless imaging capsules are used.