Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Ay, and welcome to Forward Thinking, to the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says and then
Speaker 1: you're in the Man from Mars and you go out
Speaker 1: at nine cars. I'm Joe McCormick and I'm Lauren volc
Speaker 1: Obaum and our usual host Jonathan Strickland is not with
Speaker 1: us today. He is somewhere. He's in Scotland getting his
Speaker 1: acts sharpened. I'm not sure whether that's a metaphor or not,
Speaker 1: but I'm willing to go with it quite literal. Not
Speaker 1: the mystical I was hoping not the mister mistical acts
Speaker 1: because the mystical acts is made of plastic, so if
Speaker 1: he was having someone sharpen it, that would probably go
Speaker 1: poorly for everyone involved. No, I think he's actually getting
Speaker 1: a full suit of male armor made. I would I
Speaker 1: would like that. I would appreciate. Oh, man, imagine if
Speaker 1: you were that in the studio. It would make so
Speaker 1: many interest noises. Yeah, the shuffling, Yeah, it's great, it
Speaker 1: would be soothing. Yeah. Do you remember the time on
Speaker 1: this podcast. I'm pretty sure it was on this podcast
Speaker 1: in the past that we talked about crazy ants crazy.
Speaker 1: I very dimly remember that. I honestly don't remember what
Speaker 1: we recorded yesterday. There was some time when we were talking,
Speaker 1: I know about crazy ants that are these ants that
Speaker 1: are sort of known for getting into like you find
Speaker 1: them inside your TV. Yeah, yeah, I remember reading all
Speaker 1: of these weird news stories about this a few months
Speaker 1: or maybe about a year back, when just these giant
Speaker 1: populations of ants were taking over people's electronics and so
Speaker 1: and so. The immediate assumption is, like, the ants are
Speaker 1: eating my television. Why were they eating the TV? I
Speaker 1: don't know if they were actually eating the electronics, but
Speaker 1: they were at least attracted to the electronics or yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were swarming inside electronics because you know, a they're
Speaker 1: they're nice dark places where they can nest and uh
Speaker 1: and like something about the electrical current I think it was,
Speaker 1: was was attractive to them and and then you would
Speaker 1: find yeah, yeah, and then you would find a lot
Speaker 1: of dead ones in there, because you know, they would
Speaker 1: get zapped by the electrical current and just fill up
Speaker 1: the whole space with their bodies. That's pretty cool. Well,
Speaker 1: I wonder if those crazy ants that supposedly like to
Speaker 1: eat electronics were onto something because there has been a
Speaker 1: wave of interesting news in the technology world about edible electronics.
Speaker 1: But not like, not like edible electronics, like you're eating
Speaker 1: them for sustenance. I mean, right, surely not, because I mean, really,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a kind of stupid idea to eat
Speaker 1: any electronics, right, I mean, they're expensive, more expensive than food. Usually,
Speaker 1: they're they're crunchy in ways that you don't want your
Speaker 1: food to be. They probably don't taste all that good
Speaker 1: to begin with. But let me give you a scenario
Speaker 1: in which you may in fact decide that you want
Speaker 1: to eat some electronics. I'll lay out the options for you. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say that, give me the menu. Yeah, you're you're
Speaker 1: going in for checkout with your doctor, and your doctor
Speaker 1: she looks over and she says, you know, just to
Speaker 1: be safe, I'm going to need to take a look
Speaker 1: at the inside of your lower g I tract and
Speaker 1: inspect the inner lining of your colon for polyps and cancer. Okay.
Speaker 1: I can see many situations in which I would want
Speaker 1: to make sure I don't have cancer in my lower
Speaker 1: gas ro intestinal tract, right, And the obvious way of
Speaker 1: going about this is something you may very well be
Speaker 1: familiar with. Its tube endoscopy. We're also known as the colonoscopy.
Speaker 1: You're probably familiar with this procedure. It's a tube, it's
Speaker 1: got a camera on it. It's inserted into the colon, yeah,
Speaker 1: fed up along the lower tract of your intestine, and
Speaker 1: allows the doctor to take a look around. And yes,
Speaker 1: a procedure like this could save your life, So if
Speaker 1: it's recommended by your doctor, it's worth getting. Probably go
Speaker 1: along with what they say to do totally, despite any
Speaker 1: perceived discomfort and embarrassment. But what if you had another
Speaker 1: option other than the tube. Let's say that your doctor says, okay,
Speaker 1: you can get the tube, or you can just take
Speaker 1: a pill. And it works like this. You swallow a
Speaker 1: clear plastic capsule containing a camera and an LED, and
Speaker 1: this ingested imaging device can travel through your entire gi tract,
Speaker 1: taking thousands of pictures as it goes along, and then
Speaker 1: transmitting those pictures wirelessly to a receiver device worn on
Speaker 1: the outside of the body. Now, the crazy thing is
Speaker 1: this actually exists, and it's known as capsule indoscopy. For
Speaker 1: many patients, it is obviously a much less troubling proposition
Speaker 1: than tube in discopy. Well, and it's also a hypothetically
Speaker 1: an outpatient treatment. When you go in for a colonoscopy,
Speaker 1: you have to like get an I V and get
Speaker 1: knocked out and spend you know, twenty four hours beforehand preparing.
Speaker 1: Although I had imagine that that you would also have
Speaker 1: to prepare for this kind of situation too. Yeah, somewhat,
Speaker 1: but it is obviously lower investment on your party. Not
Speaker 1: having to put someone under anesthesia is always preferable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure how much such a procedure stacks
Speaker 1: up against the imaging power of a traditional colonoscopy today.
Speaker 1: I found one study back from two thousand nine, so
Speaker 1: you know, that's like seven years ago now, crazy, Uh
Speaker 1: that that showed It showed back then traditional colonoscopy was
Speaker 1: more sensitive. So if your doctor recommends you go with
Speaker 1: the two, best to do as they say. But let's
Speaker 1: say we just imagine a scenario where these su procedures
Speaker 1: are the same cost, equally effective, and you can get
Speaker 1: equally good imaging from either one. Who wouldn't go with
Speaker 1: the pill. Most people would go with the pill, right,
Speaker 1: So having a good capsule contained camera that can take
Speaker 1: pictures inside the body is one thing. Um, but as
Speaker 1: far as I'm aware, existing endoscopic capsule cameras are not
Speaker 1: meant to actually be digested. They're meant to pass all
Speaker 1: the way through you. Uh, and then once they go
Speaker 1: outside the digestive system intact there you know you, yeah,
Speaker 1: you Typically you don't have to recover them. They'll transmit
Speaker 1: images to some kind of receiver and then you don't
Speaker 1: have to go phish it out. But if one word,
Speaker 1: to get stuck or damaged inside you, that would be
Speaker 1: a bad thing. You might need some surgery to get
Speaker 1: it removed. So these little pill machines might be considered
Speaker 1: only semi edible. Sure, and and and right, you really
Speaker 1: don't want that capsule breaking open because most of the
Speaker 1: things that electronics are made of, and I kind of
Speaker 1: meant to mention this earlier, aren't good for you. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a minute. Yeah. But what
Speaker 1: if you could eat tiny electronic machines that could do
Speaker 1: work inside of you and then even potentially be digested
Speaker 1: and absorbed without causing any harm to your body. This
Speaker 1: is the subject of today's episode. Yes, edible electronics. Edible electronics,
Speaker 1: So as weird as this sounds, it probably also sounds
Speaker 1: fairly futuristic, but it's not an entirely new concept. This
Speaker 1: isn't something that just showed up in the past few years.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and and every time that the that the
Speaker 1: science news media reports on it, it's like brand new,
Speaker 1: but it's not. Um, well, okay, totally edible electronics don't
Speaker 1: exist yet, but the underlying research into them has been
Speaker 1: going on since at the very least, is the first
Speaker 1: that the earliest paper that I could find from an
Speaker 1: albeit brief search into uh ingestible electronics, which is kind
Speaker 1: of the precursor here. That's like that the capsule endoscope endoscopy, endoscopy,
Speaker 1: endoscopy endoscopy. Great words it is, I love words. UM
Speaker 1: paper was a study of how the body reacts when
Speaker 1: weights are lifted in different ways, and uh in a
Speaker 1: swallowed sensor was measure pressure happening inside the abdomen during
Speaker 1: the study. So interesting, um I've seen I've seen other
Speaker 1: Science News site. The nineteen seventies is the beginning of
Speaker 1: this kind of research, so it's a possibility that's been
Speaker 1: going on for longer than that, but definitely ingustable biosign
Speaker 1: trackers have been used in labs since nineteen uh and
Speaker 1: and ingustable biosign trackers have been commercially available since that
Speaker 1: is when a temperature sensor hit the market, which is
Speaker 1: useful for getting accurate readings on a subject's core body
Speaker 1: temperature when the subject is, you know, doing stuff and
Speaker 1: not available to sit around with a thermometer in their mouth. Also,
Speaker 1: thermometers in the mouth are not necessarily the most accurate
Speaker 1: version of getting a subject's core body temperature, which can
Speaker 1: come in very handy when you're trying to do something like, say,
Speaker 1: prevent the injury of an athlete or an astronaut from
Speaker 1: heat exhaustion and a heat stroke. The technology was actually
Speaker 1: developed by the Johns Hopkins You Diversity Applied Physics Lab
Speaker 1: and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center with with the specific
Speaker 1: goal of putting these capsules and astronauts when they go
Speaker 1: out on spacewalks and make sure that they're not overheating
Speaker 1: in their space suits. Okay, that's interesting, Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: So that does sound like a like a highly specialized
Speaker 1: usage there, absolutely and even in the case of of
Speaker 1: competitive athletes, making sure that those that those people are
Speaker 1: not getting heat strokes as well is specialized. Many of us,
Speaker 1: I understand, are not competitive athletes. I know I'm not.
Speaker 1: Does competitive eating count? Are you competitive about eating? Have
Speaker 1: you entered eating competitions? I do enter a kind of
Speaker 1: like frenzied state whenever I'm made to eat at my
Speaker 1: desk at work, because I'm afraid everybody can hear me chewing,
Speaker 1: and I just want to get it over with as
Speaker 1: fast as possible. I'm afraid that I I A. I
Speaker 1: sit next to Joe in the office. You guys, and
Speaker 1: uh and I've never heard you chew, so your relatively
Speaker 1: what have you heard meet to electronics because that can
Speaker 1: get you. Oh yeah, that's much crunch here. Okay, So
Speaker 1: this kind of work has only been the beginning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh there, there's been a huge body of this kind
Speaker 1: of research, and we wanted to talk specifically about the
Speaker 1: work of one Christopher Bettinger, who has done just a
Speaker 1: lot of really great thought and writing about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he showed up on on this topic recently. So he's
Speaker 1: a Carnegie Melon professor, Christopher Beninger, and he's he's worked
Speaker 1: with the idea of edible electronics for a while now.
Speaker 1: So he imagines, for instance, a sensor that you could
Speaker 1: swallow that would be able to monitor the state of
Speaker 1: your gut by looking at the state of your microbiome
Speaker 1: or checking for signs of g I problems like Crohn's
Speaker 1: disease or or bacterial infections in the gut, Or like
Speaker 1: you could take a pill that includes a machine that
Speaker 1: would monitor your uptake of an ingested medication and track
Speaker 1: how the drug is being absorbed by the body, or
Speaker 1: for example, like a pill that contains a measure the
Speaker 1: drug payload and then monitors conditions or placement inside your
Speaker 1: body to selectively release specific amounts of medication based on
Speaker 1: based on information, not just a dumb dose, but a
Speaker 1: smart dose. Right, And hey, you know why stop at
Speaker 1: swallowing electronics in order to improve healthcare outcomes. Motorola has
Speaker 1: spoken to the makers of an ingestible electronic pill about
Speaker 1: creating something that serves as an authenticator, So like, you
Speaker 1: don't need to remember a pass code anymore or carry
Speaker 1: around a ring of keys, because electronics around you, like
Speaker 1: your phone or your laptop of your car would all
Speaker 1: know who you are because of this electronic pill that
Speaker 1: you ate. Oh, I think we've talked about this on
Speaker 1: the show before, because I remembered us talking about the
Speaker 1: cybersecurity of your personal waste, right, like, like, if there
Speaker 1: was a pill authentication form, could somebody use your poop
Speaker 1: to log in as you? They probably we could. That's
Speaker 1: a nice thought. But anyway, going on with the with
Speaker 1: the Bettinger's work, So so all those ideas, I just
Speaker 1: said that that makes sense that that'd be a cool
Speaker 1: thing to have, But hold your equines. Now, most electronics,
Speaker 1: as we hinted at earlier, contain materials that would not
Speaker 1: be very friendly to the inside of your body, especially
Speaker 1: components like batteries, which often contain chemicals that are just
Speaker 1: intrinsically toxic. You don't want to menu. And if one
Speaker 1: of these toxic batteries get stuck in your GI tract
Speaker 1: and does not pass through, this is a problem. Is
Speaker 1: the same thing we were talking about with the camera
Speaker 1: capsule earlier, Like it's fine if it just passes through
Speaker 1: as normal. If it were to get stuck or something
Speaker 1: that would be bad, you might need surgery. But this
Speaker 1: is why so people in this field have been looking
Speaker 1: towards ideas of using digestible or biodegradable materials to make
Speaker 1: these edible electronics out of like making the electronics themselves
Speaker 1: inherently endly to your body. So Bettinger authored a review
Speaker 1: in a issue of Trends in Biotechnology called Materials Advances
Speaker 1: for Next Generation Ingestible Electronic Medical Devices. And in this
Speaker 1: review he sort of he points out a problem with
Speaker 1: many existing electronic devices meant to go inside the body.
Speaker 1: How do electronic implants get inside of you? While they
Speaker 1: get in through invasive surgeries, which is always something we
Speaker 1: should be trying to avoid if possible surgery comes with
Speaker 1: a cost and a small risk to the patient. But
Speaker 1: once these things are inside the body, then they have
Speaker 1: to operate in what Beninger calls challenging micro environments. No
Speaker 1: joke will be the body, Yeah, I mean, essentially, the
Speaker 1: human body doesn't want stuff that isn't itself inside of itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: generally not so then, of course, once they're in there,
Speaker 1: they can tend to cause bacterial infections and inflammation at
Speaker 1: the implant site. And so advances in materials and strategies
Speaker 1: for fabricating electronic devices to go inside the body could
Speaker 1: help us avoid some of these problems. And ultimately he's
Speaker 1: focused on finding new strategies for creating quote packaging, circuit design,
Speaker 1: and onboard power supplies that are benign, non toxic, and
Speaker 1: even biodegradable. These also on like great ideas, but are
Speaker 1: there are there like category, can we break this down
Speaker 1: a little bit like like is there are are there
Speaker 1: pathways we can take in order to get there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: He identifies sort of three major trends. One is miniaturization,
Speaker 1: So that is sort of self explanatory, but it's a
Speaker 1: trend toward devices and device components that are smaller but
Speaker 1: also use less power. And that's important because power once
Speaker 1: you get into extreme miniaturization of technology. Uh, as we've
Speaker 1: seen on the show plenty of times, power is very
Speaker 1: often a concern. So you've got like little tiny robots
Speaker 1: that you want to you know, make into some kind
Speaker 1: of swarm that will that will go inside people and
Speaker 1: control their mind or whatever. We're usually researching, uh these things.
Speaker 1: One of the big problems with them is how do
Speaker 1: they talk to each other? And how do they how
Speaker 1: do they move? But yeah, where does their power come from?
Speaker 1: Batteries are not the easiest part. Another trend he identifies
Speaker 1: is quote bioresorbable electronics, and that's this main thing towards
Speaker 1: UH increased knowledge about how to make electronics components out
Speaker 1: of materials that are transient and biodegradable rather than toxic
Speaker 1: and indigestible like most batteries and things like that are.
Speaker 1: And speaking of batteries, bio batteries is the last big trend.
Speaker 1: He identifies non toxic biological materials that can serve as
Speaker 1: energy storage, and this is one of the keys to
Speaker 1: ingestable electronics. So let's go back to imagining these these
Speaker 1: devices that you could swallow. So here's one that might
Speaker 1: follow from Bettinger's ideas. The actual logic circuits in this
Speaker 1: electronic device are made out of silicon contained in some
Speaker 1: sort of biodegradable envelope. Silicon's not gonna hurt you. Other
Speaker 1: components such as antennae or do we just say antenna's
Speaker 1: now when we're talking about electronics rather than insects, I
Speaker 1: think we might like idiots. Yeah, okay, I'm sorry, and
Speaker 1: tenna's apologize on behalf of the language. Components like antenna's,
Speaker 1: they're made out of benign, relatively non toxic materials like
Speaker 1: maybe copper or magnesium, things that are technically essential nutrients
Speaker 1: in your body, and that could certainly be be worked
Speaker 1: into an electronic component in doses under the daily recommended value. Right,
Speaker 1: you're already consuming them. They're already in you. As long
Speaker 1: as you don't eat a just huge amount of them,
Speaker 1: they're fine. So batteries again are one of the biggest questions.
Speaker 1: But Beninger has been working on this problem, and as
Speaker 1: of last year, I read news that his team had
Speaker 1: built a battery with an anode made out of manganese oxide,
Speaker 1: which is a normal, safe mineral found in the body.
Speaker 1: Another one of those, and a cathode made out of melanin,
Speaker 1: which is another thing naturally found in the body. It's
Speaker 1: a natural pigment, so you find it in hair and
Speaker 1: skin and your eyeballs. Yeah, exactly. And in many cases
Speaker 1: the liquids inside the body, such as gastric fluid itself,
Speaker 1: can be perfectly able to function as the electrolyte solution
Speaker 1: through which current flows between the cathode and the Anna.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, that's exciting. So it's it's like an open
Speaker 1: battery system that sounds either exciting or bad. I'm I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty cool, Okay, alright, cool, excellent. I'm worried
Speaker 1: I'm I'm picturing I'm picturing what is probably not the
Speaker 1: scientific case of just of just your whole stomach, like
Speaker 1: like zapping you continually until the battery runs down. Well,
Speaker 1: fortunately these batteries are not capable of that much power,
Speaker 1: and it seems like they're going to be capable of
Speaker 1: only a little bit of power, just enough to make
Speaker 1: it work. Right. Ah, yeah, that that's right. I did
Speaker 1: read a figure in which the battery, this type of
Speaker 1: battery provided five milliwotts of power for for up to
Speaker 1: twenty hours. And and that twenty hour kind of figure
Speaker 1: is a good goal post that they're looking for, because
Speaker 1: that's about as long as it takes for something to
Speaker 1: move from your mouth out through your other end. So
Speaker 1: so that's that's a good hallmark of how long a
Speaker 1: battery like this should should last for an endoscopic camera. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's it could probably, I'm not sure. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if it could quite power an endoscopic camera. Yet
Speaker 1: it's certainly not enough to like power your smartphone. I
Speaker 1: really love reading the work that Bedinger has been been
Speaker 1: doing about all of this. It's it's really forward thinking.
Speaker 1: I feel like we should have some kind of sound
Speaker 1: cue whenever we mentioned the show's title in the episode.
Speaker 1: But UM's, yeah, it's it's it's really it's really interesting,
Speaker 1: um and and looking towards the future, but but also
Speaker 1: absolutely describing a lot of what's already going on, Like
Speaker 1: there's so many laboratory studies that I ran across while
Speaker 1: we were doing this research that are using these principles
Speaker 1: in order to to make stuff that people can swallow
Speaker 1: for laboratory studies. It's it's it's great. And I and
Speaker 1: I had no idea that any of this was going
Speaker 1: on before we went into this. I love I love
Speaker 1: it when I am surprised by all of the science
Speaker 1: going on in our world. It's strange. Yeah, you'd think
Speaker 1: you'd hear about people eating electronics, you would, You just don't. Huh, Well,
Speaker 1: I got another one. Is pretty weird about this? How
Speaker 1: about eating origami robots or what? Okay, okay, I can
Speaker 1: I can start. It sounds laughable at first, but then
Speaker 1: you think or Agby is nice and folded up and
Speaker 1: and sometimes sharp corners pokey the inside of me. Right,
Speaker 1: No that's not no, that's not the point. Um no,
Speaker 1: but it could probably unfold and do stuff in your body. Yeahah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So we we've talked about the research of m I
Speaker 1: T computer scientists Dan yellow Russ on the show before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she she's known for these robots or her group
Speaker 1: has been doing some really interesting investigation of the concept
Speaker 1: of edible electronic technology. So for a while now, Ruce
Speaker 1: and her people have been working on these things, these
Speaker 1: origami robots, shape shifting robots that can assemble themselves and
Speaker 1: assume different morphologies when subjected to a stimulus. For example,
Speaker 1: you have a flat piece of plastic or layered material
Speaker 1: that you produced by three D printing or laser cutting,
Speaker 1: and then when that material is subjected to some kind
Speaker 1: of stimulus, say it's baked at a certain temperature, or
Speaker 1: connected to batteries or submerged in water or something like that,
Speaker 1: it will naturally fold into programmed shapes and configurations. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it can even fold itself in a way that causes movement,
Speaker 1: like the oregomy robot can bend itself in such a
Speaker 1: way that it crawls or swims. Well, yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is totally we We did an episode a long time
Speaker 1: ago about for D printing, and this is the idea
Speaker 1: behind all of that. Yeah, yeah, similar ideas definitely, Uh,
Speaker 1: So how does it do this? Well? How? How how
Speaker 1: would you have something that crawls just by bending? Uh?
Speaker 1: Like several of Rus's robots, this robot has several layers
Speaker 1: of material. So it has a middle layer of material
Speaker 1: that shrinks or expands in response to temperature, and then
Speaker 1: scoring on the outer layers of the material determines what
Speaker 1: shapes the material bends into when the middle layer shrinks.
Speaker 1: But so in so so, how does this come into
Speaker 1: entering the body? Why would you put one of these
Speaker 1: in your mouth? Well? In the most recent research, scientists
Speaker 1: from this m I T Group and the University of
Speaker 1: Sheffield and Tokyo Tech teamed up to test an origami
Speaker 1: robot meant for the inside of the body in a
Speaker 1: simulated esophagus and stomach. So one of the challenges here
Speaker 1: is being able to make this bending, gut swimming robot
Speaker 1: out of bio safe materials. Right in the end, uh
Speaker 1: they used this biodegradable plastic film for the shrinking middle layer,
Speaker 1: and that is known as bio lephon, and then that's
Speaker 1: the part that contracts and empowers the movement, and then
Speaker 1: the structural material, the outer material was made out of
Speaker 1: dehydrated pig intestine a k a. The natural casing in
Speaker 1: your sausage. Yeah yeah, that sounds really gross right up
Speaker 1: until you think about how delicious sausages are and you
Speaker 1: know that crispy coating on the outside natural pig intestine,
Speaker 1: that's right. Oh yeah, so it's one of my favorite things.
Speaker 1: On your charcuterie board. There may be a robot, especially
Speaker 1: prepared by your chef for you for your stomach purposes.
Speaker 1: But what would it do? Why would you want a
Speaker 1: biodegradable origami robot crawling around inside your body made of
Speaker 1: dehydrated pin intestine partially? Yeah. So let's say you accidentally
Speaker 1: swallow a watch battery like you do sometimes. Maybe stuff happens,
Speaker 1: cut your bowl of peanuts right next to your bowl
Speaker 1: of batteries, and you can't take your eyes off the
Speaker 1: season finale of The Bachelor. Oh my god, what are
Speaker 1: they gonna say next? And so you accidentally tossed down
Speaker 1: a fistful of toxic battery discs. This is something, this
Speaker 1: is something that's happened in your house before. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I can't say that that I've ever watched The Bachelor.
Speaker 1: I have eaten batteries and sometimes, uh it's crazy, but
Speaker 1: apparently I've read that this happens around thirty times a
Speaker 1: year in the United States. I think primarily in young
Speaker 1: children who don't know better than to not eat batteries.
Speaker 1: Is candy pretty much? Sure, I mean they're shiny. Uh
Speaker 1: So here I have no choice but to read a
Speaker 1: truly sublime quote from the m I T News feature
Speaker 1: on this research quote chu Hey, And this is one
Speaker 1: of the researchers. Shouy bought a piece of ham, and
Speaker 1: he put the battery on the ham. Ruce says, within
Speaker 1: half an hour, the battery was fully submerged in the ham. Submerged,
Speaker 1: submerged in the ham. So that made me realize that, yes,
Speaker 1: this is important. If you have a battery in your body,
Speaker 1: you really wanted out as soon as possible. That's Danielle
Speaker 1: Rous speaking. Submerged in the hand, submerged in the ham,
Speaker 1: and she is one correct that has convinced me and
Speaker 1: emerged in the ham. Get that out of me. If
Speaker 1: it can do that to ham, think about what it's
Speaker 1: going to do to my squishy inside exactly. This is
Speaker 1: a reflection of the fact that swallowed batteries or other
Speaker 1: dangerous objects can burn into the walls of the stomach
Speaker 1: and there hilarious. It's not funny, it's very tragic. Well,
Speaker 1: you need to have some way of getting this thing
Speaker 1: out of the body. You've got to be able to
Speaker 1: get in and remove it. And so here's where the
Speaker 1: origami robot comes in. Okay, how does the origami robot
Speaker 1: save the day? So you swallow a capsule and in
Speaker 1: the research, this is just a piece of ice with
Speaker 1: the robot folded up and frozen and side so it's
Speaker 1: like a piece of ice capsule. It might be a
Speaker 1: different kind of thing if you were to actually have
Speaker 1: something like this in a hospital. But you swallow it,
Speaker 1: the capsule opens up inside your stomach and then releases
Speaker 1: the tiny robot, and then the tiny robot can use
Speaker 1: its bending motion to move around inside the body. Now
Speaker 1: somebody on the outside then uses controlled magnetic fields to
Speaker 1: direct the motion of the robot, and then the robot
Speaker 1: moves to the foreign object, maybe the battery that submerged
Speaker 1: in the ham inside your stomach, and then it attaches
Speaker 1: to the battery, lifts it out of the tissue where
Speaker 1: it's become embedded, and then from there the robot and
Speaker 1: the foreign object can be safely passed on through the
Speaker 1: digestive system. I can't believe that we've gotten this far
Speaker 1: in the episode so far without mentioning um Martin Short
Speaker 1: and the amazing film Inner Space. You know, I think
Speaker 1: I've actually never seen that, though I've talked about it
Speaker 1: on the podcast before. Yeah, I think I there used
Speaker 1: to be a ride at Epcot Center that had something
Speaker 1: to do with all of this. There was one going
Speaker 1: Inside the Body movie that was serious, and then I
Speaker 1: think one that was a comedy. Right. I think the
Speaker 1: one I'm talking about was the comedy. I don't think
Speaker 1: Martin Short does that many serious films that could be wrong.
Speaker 1: I and checked up on him in a while. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna feel really bad if he's dead. I'm not sure. No,
Speaker 1: he's doing great. Oh oh okay, I'm I'm very much relieved. Okay, Well, hey,
Speaker 1: how any other edible electronics you want to tell me about, Lauren. Yes,
Speaker 1: one bit of research that we saw that, the bit
Speaker 1: that inspired this episode to begin with, actually is about
Speaker 1: a truly edible electronic component, like digestible, like made out
Speaker 1: of food, so not just something that can be digested
Speaker 1: and it's fine. It's something that is meant to be digested,
Speaker 1: that is mostly entirely meant to be digested. Yes, okay.
Speaker 1: So in May of twenty sixteen, a team out of
Speaker 1: Arizona State University published a paper in the journal Advanced
Speaker 1: Materials Technologies about their lab testing of a super capacitor
Speaker 1: made out of food products. Super Capacitors are a type
Speaker 1: of like short term energy storage that can be used
Speaker 1: to deliver little jolts of power. Um, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a battery type component. It's not as powerful as a
Speaker 1: battery would be, but it's good in certain situations that
Speaker 1: you don't want to send a battery into necessarily. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, the team the team used a simulated human
Speaker 1: stomach to uh to test these devices in and they
Speaker 1: managed to successfully zap and kill some E. Coli bacteria.
Speaker 1: Pretty cool, and also to power and LED and also
Speaker 1: to power and endoscopic camera, so that was pretty cool
Speaker 1: for about three minutes. After three minutes, the device was
Speaker 1: digested by the artificial gastric fluid. But so how did
Speaker 1: they do it? Good question? What was their recipe? Was
Speaker 1: it anything like the ones we've seen already? No? Uh no,
Speaker 1: Pagan testines at all. Uh well, okay, they experimented with
Speaker 1: a bunch of different food stuffs. Pagan testines may have
Speaker 1: been involved, but they settled on a sandwich kind of thing. Okay.
Speaker 1: So it was a combination of gelatine and cheddar cheese
Speaker 1: as a protective casing. Um. Some the electrodes were made
Speaker 1: out of devated charcoal, which is a stuff that's available
Speaker 1: in dietary supplements. People take those those anti hangover pills.
Speaker 1: People take something like that. Uh So yeah, I activated
Speaker 1: charcoal bound with egg whites and then dried where the
Speaker 1: electrode layers. This sounds like Body Builder. The electrodes were
Speaker 1: separated by a sheet of seaweed which was soaked in
Speaker 1: the electro light, which was gatorade or a Bonster energy drink. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so ions from the liquid electrolyte could flow through the
Speaker 1: sheet of seaweed because she seaweed is you know, permeable, uh,
Speaker 1: therefore creating a current. But the seaweed is solid enough
Speaker 1: to prevent the electrodes from making contact with each other.
Speaker 1: And then sheets of gold leaf, which are used as
Speaker 1: decoration and high end pastry and sometimes an Indian food,
Speaker 1: served as the current. Collectors to make the whole thing viable.
Speaker 1: So so they built these devices up like a like
Speaker 1: like teeny little lasagnia ravioli is kind of the little
Speaker 1: little sandwiches. Um, moving from the outside to the center.
Speaker 1: It was gelatin sheet, cheddar cheese, gold leaf egg and
Speaker 1: charcoal stuff electric like soaked seaweed, and then out again
Speaker 1: in the opposite order, a little sandwich and the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Each of the devices, uh is a little square, like
Speaker 1: a little bit larger than the size of a soy
Speaker 1: sauce packet. And according to the studies principal investigator hen
Speaker 1: King Jong, it tastes like cheese. What kind of cheese
Speaker 1: cheddar cheese? Yeah? I mean and actually actually the straight
Speaker 1: the straight quote from Arizona State University from from its
Speaker 1: press release about this whole thing is even better than
Speaker 1: just to taste like cheese. The quote is asked what
Speaker 1: the combination tastes like, Jong replied, it is cheese. It
Speaker 1: is cheese. I thought I thought you'd like that in
Speaker 1: particular too. Um. But but if you're worried that this
Speaker 1: isn't like weird enough, worry not. They experimented with all
Speaker 1: kinds of other strange ingredients when coming up with this recipe.
Speaker 1: A few small examples MSG barbecue sauce, jello, and gummy candies.
Speaker 1: Boy ah, in that same I'm going to object to.
Speaker 1: So you've listed a lot of foods talking about this,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if I consider all of them
Speaker 1: fully edible. You've named Monster Energy drinks. Uh, gummy candy?
Speaker 1: Is MSG a food? It's a food additive product. It's
Speaker 1: made of salt, It's made of a lot of solid accent.
Speaker 1: Is that accent stuff that used to be in people's grandparents? Oh,
Speaker 1: I have I have no idea. I don't think i've
Speaker 1: heard of that. I missed the accent days. I remember
Speaker 1: thinking it was just pure MSG. It could be wrong.
Speaker 1: It's a possibility. And n SG is real tasty. I
Speaker 1: don't get headaches from it. I consider myself very lucky.
Speaker 1: In that press release, Jong also said that he had
Speaker 1: a hard time getting the university to reimburse his lab
Speaker 1: receipts at first, because they like just they were like,
Speaker 1: you're just out there throwing parties. We're not going to
Speaker 1: reimburse your party receipts for all this barbecue sauce and
Speaker 1: Monster Energy Drink and seaweed sheets. If those are the
Speaker 1: things that anyone is using to throw a party. By
Speaker 1: the way, Arizona State University, I don't just give it
Speaker 1: to of them like they're they're honestly not living on
Speaker 1: a lot. So the chemistry, yeah, yeah, all of that aside.
Speaker 1: They they're continuing their research. They hope to improve the
Speaker 1: gelatine casing in order to make future iterations of these
Speaker 1: devices last longer in the digestive tract than three minutes.
Speaker 1: Longer than three minutes would be pretty pretty useful. They
Speaker 1: also want to make it smaller by using a three
Speaker 1: D printer to do the manufacturing work rather than making
Speaker 1: them by hand. And furthermore, they're they're working on a
Speaker 1: wireless charging system that would let them re charge the
Speaker 1: device or you know, assuming that the device lasted longer
Speaker 1: than three minutes, remotely while the device is inside a
Speaker 1: human body HM. Which is one of the cool things
Speaker 1: about super capacitors. You can you can recharge them and
Speaker 1: have them release that charge many much multiple times more
Speaker 1: easily than many rechargeable batteries. Yeah. Cool, pretty cool. This
Speaker 1: is quite strange. It is, and and it's terrific because
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of got a handle on that battery
Speaker 1: leg of the of the research stool that we're working. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm just not Maybe I shouldn't use the word stool
Speaker 1: when we're already making lots of metaphors about colo. That's
Speaker 1: a good one stool because if you know, stool is
Speaker 1: three legged, one wobble and nice and stable. And there
Speaker 1: were there were two other legs which I am mostly
Speaker 1: forgetting about. And it it suggests a platform on which
Speaker 1: future research can be built. Absolutely, yeah, And you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I think that actually this this battery concept, like
Speaker 1: making a traditional anode cathode battery out of food, might
Speaker 1: be a little bit more complicated. But but supercapacitors are
Speaker 1: are great in this because they're they're really quite simple
Speaker 1: devices relatively speaking, that only need to do like basic
Speaker 1: chemical work. So they're pretty good candidates for being made
Speaker 1: out of edible stuff because edible stuff does chemical work. Anyway. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are a lot of other components in
Speaker 1: the electronics that you can make out of stuff that
Speaker 1: won't hurt you, but you probably can't make out of
Speaker 1: like food, food, actual food. Yeah, Like you're not going
Speaker 1: to like get like some popcorn and like turn it
Speaker 1: into a circuit. Probably, I don't know that much about
Speaker 1: popcorn or about circuits, if we're being super honest, But yeah,
Speaker 1: so so like, well, will we ever be able to
Speaker 1: build a camera out of food or radio antenna or
Speaker 1: a radio emitter? Mm hmmm, how long until there's an
Speaker 1: edible phone? Never give me an edible phone. I would
Speaker 1: definitely be hungry, like in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: and like like going to bed and would just eat
Speaker 1: it and then I and I wouldn't wake up in
Speaker 1: the morning because my alarm clock is my phone. Everything
Speaker 1: would be terrible. It would also be unsanitary because you
Speaker 1: know everybody takes their phone out when they go into
Speaker 1: the bathroom. Okay, no edible phones. That that is not
Speaker 1: the future of edible electronics. Okay, So I'm going to
Speaker 1: steal an idea from a random internet comment I saw here.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, Okay, is this the future of edible electronics?
Speaker 1: Comment or wisdom? Put GPS trackers in foods that you
Speaker 1: fear maybe stolen, and if somebody yanks your lunch out
Speaker 1: of the fridge at work and eats it without your consent,
Speaker 1: you can track them down and get that lunch back.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I would want to get the
Speaker 1: lunch back. Well, it might be expensive electronics there if
Speaker 1: it's worth it, Uh, no matter what, I like, like
Speaker 1: making any I mean, even if, even if we never
Speaker 1: come around to a point where our laptops are made
Speaker 1: out of edible stuff. Uh. This this sounding more and
Speaker 1: more like Willy Wonka. Even if we never get to
Speaker 1: that point, any kind of process that's going to make
Speaker 1: devices safer, that that are going into bodies, that are
Speaker 1: helping patients, uh, that that are helping doctors help patients,
Speaker 1: you know, get over terrible diseases or find their cancer
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, that's great. Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: don't need to dream up any extra weird ways to
Speaker 1: use edible electronics on top of the things that have
Speaker 1: already been suggested by the researchers themselves. I mean, being
Speaker 1: able to have something that's a safer option for internal
Speaker 1: imaging or something that could retrieve foreign objects from the
Speaker 1: inside of the body. I mean that alone is a
Speaker 1: very worthwhile thing to research. So more power to the Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did not I didn't know anything about anything getting
Speaker 1: submerged in ham before this, and now I'm very concerned
Speaker 1: about it. So I'm real glad that people are working
Speaker 1: on it, and I think I think that that's just
Speaker 1: about all that we have to say about edible electronics today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so wrapping this up, Hey, what do you guys think
Speaker 1: about all this? Do you have a wacky edible electronic
Speaker 1: that you would like to propose to us? We want
Speaker 1: to hear about it if if there's one that we
Speaker 1: particularly enjoy, we will let we will let the rest
Speaker 1: of the podcast audience know about it out loud with
Speaker 1: our voices. So send those in. You can send those
Speaker 1: into our email address. It is FW thinking at how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. You can visit us on Twitter
Speaker 1: or Facebook. Our handles in both of those places are also,
Speaker 1: strangely enough, FW Thinking. You can also visit our website
Speaker 1: if you'd like to. We have a whole series of videos.
Speaker 1: Do you guys know about those? Joe and I write
Speaker 1: for them. Jonathan right sometimes he's the host of all
Speaker 1: of them. They're great. They're produced by this guy named
Speaker 1: Dan Bush, who's really nice has an adorable baby. So
Speaker 1: go check those out, and uh, we hope to hear
Speaker 1: from you. Either way, you will hear from us again
Speaker 1: very soon for more on this topic and the future
Speaker 1: of technology. I'll visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to
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