Chili Crab Dinner Inspires Robot That Crawls Down Your Throat To Grab Your Cancer

By Rebecca Boyle Posted 02.02.2012 at 5:11 pm 5 Comments

An Inspiring Dinner The inventors of a crab-like surgical robot were inspired to build their device after a chili crab dinner in Singapore. Dr. Rosenrosen via Flickr

Who ever doubted an amazing meal could change your life? Researchers in Singapore have developed a robotic surgery device inspired by the country’s famous national dish, chili crab. The mini crab robot crawls down your throat and into the stomach, where its pincers grab onto a cancerous mass and a hook slices it away.

It could help patients with early-stage gastrointestinal cancer and is far less invasive than other surgical options — since it enters through your mouth, it leaves no visible scars.

Enterologist Lawrence Ho of Singapore’s National University Hospital co-designed the robot and said it has already been used to remove early-stage stomach cancers in five patients in India and Hong Kong, according to Reuters. Other existing methods to excise these types of cancers require cutting a patient open, either through a large-scale invasive surgery or a keyhole surgery, in which smaller incisions can still enable surgical access. But those methods are both quite painful and invasive.

Instead, this device enters through a patient’s mouth and is attached to an endoscope, through which a surgeon can watch and control the robot’s actions. A hook attached to the crab bot is used to remove the cancerous tissue, and it also coagulates the blood to stop internal bleeding.

Ho and Louis Phee, associate professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological Institute, decided to build the robot after a 2004 chili crab dinner with a well-known Hong Kong surgeon named Sydney Chung. Chung apparently suggested the crab as a prototype. “The crab can pick up sand and its pincers are very strong,” Ho noted.

The team formed a company in October and hopes to commercialize the crab bot within three years, Reuters reported.

[International Business Times]

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5 Comments

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GarudaX

02/02/12 at 7:43 pm

Very interesting. I'd like to know how small it is in real life. :)

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nebulation

02/02/12 at 11:16 pm

This is awesome! I had the same idea of using nanobots to eliminate cancerous cells. You can see where I posted that idea in the related article link - Microrockets Can Zip Around the Human Stomach, Powered by Hydrogen Bubbles higher up this page! I strongly believe this is a great idea and will ultimately be the method of choice in eliminating cancerous cells! All that needs to be done now is people putting this plan into action!

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Lord Elliot the...

02/03/12 at 1:04 am

The only problem is getting people to accept having a robot crab shoved down their throat...
-Spouting a fountain of nonsense since 1995-

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Midoman

02/03/12 at 11:27 am

very cool and creepy. Everything fails...so when will this?

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vt007

02/03/12 at 2:45 pm

hey evrybody, Midoman failed in his life ^^ such a pure anger ^^

anyway, i personally dont minde some robots in my stomach as long as i can "take" them out by the natural way ^^
go science ^^

---
bored? lets go mine the stars... ^^

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