A case study on pill-sized robot in gastro-intestinal tract to teach robot programming and navigation

We present instructional materials to teach bio-medical engineering students about the design and control of a capsule robot operating in the human's GI tract. A design example to conceptually build such a micro-robot is first presented, and a laboratory module is then developed to demonstrate robot navigation techniques. Medical considerations such as size, speed, safety, and functionality of the robot are discussed, and robot building components including sensors, actuators, processing, communicating, and power supply are provided. The laboratory module is built on the 3D Webots simulation platform. Path planning, collision avoidance, and other robot navigation methods are introduced to acquaint bio-medical engineering students with modern robotic control techniques.