Researchers from three universities have developed what they call an "ingestible origami robot" that can heal you from the inside.

The tiny robot, developed by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Sheffield in England, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, can "unfold itself from a swallowed capsule and, steered by external magnetic fields, crawl across the stomach wall to remove a swallowed button battery or patch a wound," according to a news release.

It can also deliver medicine to designated areas of the body.

The researchers are presenting their work this week at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, and say it builds on a sequence of papers on so-called origami robots from a research group led by MIT Professor and Computer Scientist Daniela Rus.

In a statement, Rus said the small origami robots could have "important applications to health care." They could, for instance, be used to retrieve swallowed objects like the round silver button batteries used to power small electrics like wrist watches and hearing aids — without the need for surgery.

The researchers say about 3,500 button batteries are swallowed, mostly by children, in the US each year. In most cases, the batteries are digested normally, but they can cause serious internal tissue burns if they get stick in your esophagus or stomach.

The robot could attach itself to the battery, lift it from the stomach coating, and eliminate it through the digestive system, Rus explained.

"This concept…addresses a clinical need in an elegant way," Bradley Nelson, a professor of robotics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, said in a statement. "It is one of the most convincing applications of origami robots that I have seen."

For a look at the ingestible origami robot in action, check out the video above, and find out what PCMag's Dan Costa and Tim Torres have to say about it below.