Imagine a tiny robot that can enter your body via small belly button precision, perform surgery and return to its base peacefully.
Such a technology is here that can benefit future astronauts and other space explorers while living at remote moon bases or mars colonies far from earth, a fascinating research suggests.
The fist-sized robot has been developed by Nebraska-based Virtual Incision Corporation and researchers from University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Once inside the body, the robot would inflate the patient's abdominal cavity with an inert gas to create room to work, a report in New Scientist said.
Two arms tipped with multiple tools can perforate gastric ulcers, cauterise and suture wounds or perform emergency appendectomies, the report added.
A human operator would control the robot using a device that has a monitor and a foot pedal.
The robot would make its first zero-gravity test on parabolic flights in the coming months, Virtual Incision informed.
Virtual Incision is a pioneer the field of 'in vivo robot-assisted surgery' with its development of the VIC surgical system.