Anne Trafton at MIT News reports on a robotic enteroscope built by MIT engineers to travel through the small intestine. The organ runs more than 20 feet and is about an inch across, which makes it hard to reach. The current option is double balloon enteroscopy, where a worker inflates and deflates two balloons to push the scope along. It is slow.

The new robot borrows from snakes. Multifunctional actuators hold four chambers each, and inflating them in different combinations makes the tube extend or bend in any direction. Balloons in the head and tail segments take turns inflating to pull the robot forward. Those segments wear kirigami sleeves that stay flat until the balloon stretches them, popping out 3D needles that grip the slippery intestinal lining.

The robot carries a camera, a sprayer for drugs, and clips for biopsies or polyp removal. An operator steers it with an external controller over a tether, entering through the mouth or the rectum. In animal studies, it traveled about six and a half feet.…