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Robots are great for exploring places that are hard to reach. We鈥檝e sent them to explore the surface of Mars and the depths of the oceans. Soon they could be crawling over the outside of your body.

SkinBot is a palm-sized bipedal robot with suction-cup feet inspired by leeches and the suckers of cephalopods. Artem Dementyev at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab is interested in developing small helper robots that live on our bodies.

Dementyev and his colleagues have previously built robots called Rovables that crawl over clothing. But SkinBot walks over skin: it can scale the cliff face of your back and pick its way through the hair on your head or groin. 鈥淪mall companion robots have the potential to significantly improve the quality of our lives,鈥� says Dementyev.

The team designed the robot to carry out a medical inspection of a patient when there is no doctor nearby or when it would be too dangerous for a doctor to approach 鈥� such as when the person is in a collapsed building or on a battlefield.

The latest version of the robot is equipped with a camera microscope and sensors for detecting electrical signals from the skin. This lets it examine wounds or scan the skin for lesions.

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The team envisages such robots will eventually give injections or carry out minor surgical procedures. Several robots working together would be able to arrange themselves around the heart to perform multi-electrode electrocardiograms.

Before settling on suction cups, the researchers tested several other ways for their robot to crawl over a human body, including adhesive wheels and pincers. They found that suction cups were more versatile and less unpleasant for test subjects. They also found that the robot needed to weigh less than 80 grams 鈥� about as much as an apple 鈥� for them not to be uncomfortable.

Dementyev is now working on the next version of SkinBot, which will be made from soft materials like silicone. This will let the robot fit more snugly against the contours of the body. 鈥淚 imagine a tiny robot that looks and moves like an inchworm,鈥� he says.鈥�