Fantastic Voyage Revisited Robot Style

We have seen amazing medical breakthroughs, from new devices to promising chemical compounds aimed at stopping our most deadly diseases.   So much of science fiction is based upon medicine, for example Bones in Star Trek is seldom seen with a scalpel in hand, but rather a mechanical devices that offers enhanced imagining to the source of the problem.  This hope of doing away with surgery is coming closer to being a reality.

Two new robotic inventions offer a unique perspective on what’s to come.  In South Korea inventors have developed a “micro robot” that is capable of navigating the blood systems to deliver his medical payload of drugs to the source of the infection. These microscopic devices have very practical uses from targeting coronary arteries to unblocking obstructions to get better images behind the tissues powered by the magmatism of an MRI machine.

Moving across the globe, researchers in Tel Aviv and Boston have developed a “robotic endoscope”.  By smelling a robot instead of a pill doctors can view the entire gastrointestinal system without in the comfort of their office vs. using anastasia. According to Gabor Kosa, an engineering professor at Tel Aviv University,”the patient swallows the endoscope and the physicians guide it to the stomach, or perhaps all the way to the small intestine. It would take images, snip out biopsy samples, or deliver drugs.”  The goal is to make the robotic capsule a third of an inch, still too small for a mini-doctor to fit in at least with our present technology, but who know’s what is next?