How An Edible Battery Could Power Medical Robots You Swallow

Chris Bettinger (left) holds the edible battery he designed with Young Jo Kim and other researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Chris Bettinger (left) holds the edible battery he designed with Young Jo Kim and other researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. That's how researcher Christopher Bettinger describes one of the biggest obstacles for sending tiny medical robots into the human body for diagnosing and treating diseases. These devices run on batteries (like those in watches) and they are usually made of toxic materials such as lithium. This month, Bettinger, based at Carnegie Mellon University, presented his group's work on creating edible, nontoxic batteries at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.