News: Engineers create self-propelled medical device

Stanford engineers create wireless, self-propelled medical device:

For 50 years, scientists searched for the secret to making tiny implantable devices that could travel through the bloodstream. Engineers at Stanford have demonstrated just such a device. Powered without wires or batteries, it can propel itself though the bloodstream and is small enough to fit through blood vessels. Someday, your doctor may turn to you and say, "Take two surgeons and call me in the morning." If that day arrives, you may have electrical engineer Ada Poon to thank. This week, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, before an audience of her peers, Poon demonstrated a tiny, wirelessly powered, self-propelled medical device capable of controlled motion through a fluid – blood, to be exact. The era of swallow-the-surgeon medical care may no longer be the stuff of science fiction.

Source: Stanford University