• Question: can you make a robotic pill that will help disabled people

    Asked by 138artc46 to Sonia, Nick, Lizzie, Andrew on 17 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Elizabeth Kapasa

      Elizabeth Kapasa answered on 17 Jun 2015:


      oo interesting question! Do you mean a pill that would turn them into part robot?!

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 17 Jun 2015:


      There are lots of work in the artificial limb area. Current work is involved into making the artificial limbs behave more like a normal limb. Many of the top of the range ones have multiple built in computer processors and actuators which manipulate the limb so it’s acts almost like normal limb. The next big thing I to have tactile sensors so it gives back the sense of touch to the user.

      The robotic pill is still much further into the future. There are lots of groups working with nano technology where autonomous miniature robots are used to build structures at a microscopic level. But they run into problems of power and intelligence to do what you would want it to do.

      There are areas of regenerative medicine which tries to grow back lost limbs – such similar to the salamander. The best work so far is building structures and when implanted into the body the body goes muscle/bone around these structures to repair that part of the body.

    • Photo: Andrew Phillips

      Andrew Phillips answered on 19 Jun 2015:


      I’ve just seen a robot that works as a 3D printer and builds a bit of a bridge then moves itself along and builds the next bit, until an entire bridge has been printed. It would be amazing if something like that could be done that would rebuild bits inside the body! That would be a great project to be involved with!

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