TED Talks Daily - How you could see inside your body — with a micro-robot | Alex Luebke, Vivek Kumbhari

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Would you swallow a micro-robot? In a gutsy demo, physician Vivek Kumbhari navigates Pillbot, a wireless, disposable robot swallowed onstage by engineer Alex Luebke, modeling how this technology can swiftly provide direct visualization of internal organs. Learn more about how micro-robots could move us past the age of invasive endoscopies and open up doors to more comfortable, affordable medical imaging. (This talk contains medical imagery.)

TED Audio Collective. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Today, a way to explore our insides that just hasn't been possible before. Engineer Alex Lubka and physician-s physician scientist Vivek Kumbhari demoed this on the TED 2024 stage

by actually swallowing a pill bot, something folks in the audience will not soon forget. Oh my God, the pill he swallowed was mind-blowing. I cannot believe he just did that. And we walked around here to actually check on the speaker and he's still standing and we're like, oh, that's a great sign. So that was definitely an aha.

That was dead like. You heard it here first, folks. The pill bot could change the game. So we'll let the people behind it explain after the break. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs,

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check out Search Engine with PJ Vogt, available now wherever you get your podcasts. And now, our TED Talk of the day. I'd like to invite you to go on a fantastic voyage with me today as we explore inside the human body. Inside each and every one of us holds mysteries and wonders that, if unlocked, lead to better health, performance and longevity.

But seeing inside has proven to be quite difficult. Since the beginning of the modern era, the only way to really look inside was through rudimentary surgeries. Over the past 150 years or so, we've had great technologies that allow us to look from the outside, like X-rays and MRIs. But what I propose, and what I'd like us to explore today, is looking at micro-robotics inside the human body.

As a first step on that journey, let me introduce you to PillBot. PillBot is a small wireless robot that is remotely controlled, and it swims around in three dimensions in a water-filled human stomach. This robot has things you would expect on a robot. It has a camera, so it gives you a live video feed. It has control circuitry. It has LED lights because inside the human body is quite dark. It has a wireless data link, and it has a battery. Now, the way this robot moves is it has three pump jet thrusters that squirt water in six different directions that allow the PillBot to fly around in three-dimensional space in a water volume. Over the past five years, we've spent a lot of time to get the size of this robot smaller and smaller.

What we started with wasn't quite... not quite swallowable. But we've finally worked our way down, and where we are these days is about the size of a small multivitamin capsule. Thank you. Now, we're going to fly this robot around for you for a little bit, but to do that, I'd like to invite Dr. Vivek Kambari.

He's the chairman of gastroenterology at the Mayo Clinic, and I'd like to have him pilot this pillbot while I turn it on. Here's a common scenario I encounter in my clinic. A patient who's generally in good health comes to see me because they have abdominal pain, and I suspect it's coming from the stomach. Now, I need to understand precisely what the problem is, but I can't just pop my head in and take a look. So, and despite that patient sitting right in front of me, I need to ask them to go back home and come back to the hospital on another occasion so I can put them to sleep with anesthesia,

so that they allow me to insert this long tube with a camera at the tip through the mouth and into the stomach. so that they allow me to insert this long tube with the camera at the tip through the mouth and into the stomach. This is an endoscopy, and it's a relatively invasive and expensive procedure. And we're on a mission to do better. We'd like to transform this experience by dematerializing the physical hospital into PillBot.

I'm using a game controller to navigate PillBot, although I could have also used a tablet or a smartphone. You can move it around rather quickly here, and you can imagine that using the tank this size, we're still able to navigate the entire experience. And this tank is significantly larger than the human stomach or any internal human organ for that matter. So we developed PillBot

to allow for direct visualization of internal organs anywhere and anytime. Whether you're at home sitting on your couch, visiting space, or right here on stage at TED. And now, back to the episode. What do you think, Alex? Should we go ahead and swallow PillBot?

In just a few seconds, Pilbot entered the stomach. So we're in the stomach now, and I'm carefully navigating around, looking for any changes in surface architecture that might represent an ulcer or a cancer or any other pathology. And I'm able to get very similar views as I would if I'd used a conventional endoscope.

Now, I'm able to see the entire stomach and revisit sites that pique my curiosity. Now, what could further improve this experience is if we used an augmented reality headset for 3D visualization of a stomach or artificial intelligence an augmented reality headset for 3D visualization of a stomach, or artificial intelligence for detection and characterization of an abnormality.

Now, fortunately for Alex, on this brief review, everything's looking normal here. So if there were a problem, being able to show and discuss with Alex in real time elevates his understanding of his health, and it's going to make him more compliant with therapy. So now that we're done here, PillBot will take its natural course through and out the body.

And fortunately for Alex, he'll have no awareness of this, and he won't have to retrieve this capsule. Now, this robot was designed for the stomach, though the entire body needs this capability. Parts of the body, such as the colon, the heart and the brain, should be made accessible with specialized robots that are just as easy to use. I've dreamt of the day

when I could explore the inside of the human body with robots, recognizing it would be an inflection point in my ability to help people live longer and healthier lives. Back to you, Alex. That was yummy. And no, you don't feel anything when the robot moves around inside you. It's quite simple. But think of that, how easy it was to get access to internal imagery anywhere.

So that's going to allow us not only internal imagery, but also the diagnosis and the treatment that the doctor might be able to give. That's going to give us access to a vast amount of information that we can then use to train AI. And with AI, we're going to be able to have it automate a whole variety of different functions, from performance improvement of the robot itself to autonomous control, where it actually flies around and maps out the entire interior surface of the stomach all on its own. That diagnosis and the treatment also comes along with that. We train AI to help learn how to do that, and eventually interventions. Let's talk about a little bit where we want to go next.

So the first thing we're going to do, we'll add some accelerometers on there so it actually helps with that autonomous control. Also very interesting, we can start adding different sensors. So wherever the robot is going, we can go ahead and measure the health of what it's looking at right there. And as far as doing lab-on-chip capabilities, where you can actually analyze the material right there in situ on the robot.

Imagine now being able to put different tools onto this, where you can cut and you can cauterize or inject medicine. Well, now you have a pill surgeon. And of course, you can have clusters of these robots that work together in unison to do complex procedures inside the human body. To go even smaller, we actually have technology that exists today that allows us to make robots at the nanoscale, which now can bring robots anywhere in the human body,

even into the human brain. And there's some phenomenal power sources that are available coming online as well. While PillBot is just about to go through clinical trials, it'll be a couple years until it's on the market, there's a long way to go we still have to bring the full ability to do inner space exploration on us all. But it's a worthwhile journey to go on.

Imagine being able to have all this information for you, for your health, for your family, and for humanity. So I'd like to invite all of you to join us in being brave and let's bring micro-robots inside the human body. Thank you very much. There's a little slice of heaven in a mountain town escape. A pace of life that's less hurried, more authentic, where experiences feel down to earth, yet

elevated. Take family time to a higher level with an ATV ride on West Virginia's Hatfield-McCoy trails. And all around the Hatfield-McCoy region, you'll find unique lodging options, great dining, historical museums, and more. Plan your getaway now at wvtourism.com. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty.

Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. That was Alex Lubka and Vivek Kumbhari from TED 2024. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson,

and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Faisy-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner, Daniela Balarezo, and Will Hennessy. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Looking for a fun challenge to share with your friends and family? TED now has games designed to keep your mind sharp while having fun. Visit TED.com slash games to explore the joy and wonder of TED Games.