Despite current advances in engineering and pharmaceuticals, the process of administering drugs is still crude, and the burden on clinical staff still extensive. Bridging this gap between engineering and clinical medicines has great potential to create a real-world impact on global health. This project aims to implement an ingestible robot capable of continuous long-term monitoring of certain biomarkers, such as acetone and ammonia, without interfering with gastric movements, with an ultimate goal to bridge the gap between diagnosis and therapeutics in the daily practice. The plan is to devise a robust capsule-like robot to enable long, for about a month, residential stay in the stomach that will not interfere with the repeated peristaltic movement performed for food digestion. The robot will be equipped with various gas sensors and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor to detect a variety of gaseous biomarkers in the dynamically changing gastric environment.

“The main reason for my participation in SuperUROP is to gain advanced level research experience like a graduate student would have. Through this project, I’ll be able to concretely work on an ingestible robotic capsule from a MechE perspective. In this process, I also hope to learn the biological and the sensor aspects of these robotic devices.”