About Edible Electronics

About Edible Electronics

The truth is, electronics in general aren't designed to be eaten.
They often have indigestible or even toxic materials inside them. They can cause serious damage if they get stuck inside you,
but researchers all around the world are working to change that.
Yes, there is actually a field of research called Edible Electronics. So why would you ever want to swallow electronics in the first place?
One reason is medical imaging. There's a process called Capsule Endoscopy in which you would swallow a small camera inside a plastic capsule, and it would take pictures of your G.I. Tract as it passes through your system.

That would mean a doctor wouldn't have to insert a tube into one end or the other, or perform abdominal surgery. But there are alternative applications as well,such as authentication. A couple of years ago a
Motorola project leader actually suggested
creating password pills.
Imagine being able to log in securely to any device because you swallowed an 
e-verification pill that morning rather than having to type in a password. Or how about throwing good electronics after bad?
Every year thousands of people in the United States accidentally swallow button batteries.
Often these batteries just pass through
our digestive system without any problem,
but sometimes they can become embedded
in various tissues like the inner lining
of our stomachs, and that can cause serous internal damage.
But what if a child accidentally swallowed
such a battery could then take a pill
containing a robot to remove that battery?
For several years now, doctor Daniela Rus
and other researchers at MIT have been
working on a concept called Origami Robots.
These are robots that are folded up into a tiny shape and can unfold when subjected to a particular stimulus like an electric current
or a change in temperature.

By unfolding and folding repeatedly, these robots can crawl or swim, and in 2016 these researchers from MIT along with others from the University of Sheffield and Tokyo Tech demonstrated that they could use such a robot in a simulated human system: An esophagus and stomach. It can be a challenge to make edible electronics
since certain components tend to have really unfriendly stuff in them, particularly batteries and power sources, but that's beginning to change too.
Carnegie Mellon professor Christopher Bettinger has been studying edible electronics for a few years, and his research team has created a battery with an anode made out of Manganese Oxide, which is a dietary mineral, and a cathode made out of Melanin, that's the pigment found in skin and hair.

This particular device could use liquids inside the body such as gastric fluid to act as an electrolyte to carry current between the anode and the cathode, and in the lab, they have demonstrated that this could create
power of five milliwatts for up to 20 hours.
Imagine a far-off future where you could even take something like a tiny surgical robot that could perform a procedure and then pass through your digestive tract, or perhaps a drug delivery robot that could travel to a specific location in your digestive tract and release medication at the right time and place.
Alright,  a question for you guys out there:
What would your edible
electronic device do?
Would it be a GPS system that
would protect your lunch?
Let me know your thoughts
in the comments below.