Eating a robot might not sound very appealing, but edible machines could be crawling their way down your intestinal tract in the near future. Scientists have created the first part of these digestible bots that could deliver medicine to people in need. The team is working with a hospitality school to see if they could even make them taste nice. The part they have created is just 90mm (3.5in) in length, 20mm (0.8in) wide and 17mm (0.7in) in thickness. This is the first part of an edible robot, which will be biodegradable and have very low levels of toxicity. Experts could train them to walk to humans who are in need of food.

From Lego bricks to batteries, young children, and even the occasional adult, can swallow a bizarre array of objects. But a new foldable robot could now help doctors remove these without the need for surgery. The origami robot can be swallowed, steered through the stomach using a magnetic field and then attach itself to the foreign objects to help them pass through the digestion system. Engineers have created a foldable robot (pictured) out of dried pig intestine and a material that shrinks when heated. When folded it can be encased in a capsule of ice so it can be swallowed.

The Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) can autonomously perform 60 percent of bowel anastomosis on pig intestines. Robots are a growing presence in operating rooms throughout the U.S. as surgeons embrace the technology to help them remove damaged organs or cancerous tissue. These systems have improved greatly in recent years but still need hands-on surgeons to guide their instruments and make critical decisions. Turning a robot loose on its own to cut and sew delicate tissue inside a human body would be a massively complex undertaking requiring advanced imaging, sensor and artificial intelligence technologies--not to mention a lot more acceptance from the medical community and federal regulators. But those hurdles have not stopped scientists at Children's National Medical Center's (CNMC) Sheikh Zayed Institute from developing a robotic system that has successfully sutured and reconnected portions of pig intestine in a living animal with little or no human intervention, according to a report in the May 4 Science Translational Medicine. Soft tissue surgeries like this one, which is called intestinal anastomosis, are especially challenging for robotic systems because the tissue changes shape and moves around during the procedures.