The year is 2025. You're sitting in a surgery watching your doctor carefully insert the tips of her fingertips into black thimble-like actuators.

A screen in front of the doctor flashes with the image of a glistening tunnel of flesh and, as she huddles over the controls, you feel a stirring in your bowels.

The gelatinous mass you feel coming to life inside you found its way into your body 24 hours earlier, when you swallowed a pill that looked unremarkable, save for its bulk.

That pill was actually a package of edible electronics, a miniature robot that will allow the doctor to feel inside your body without making a single incision.

This is the coming world of augmented humans, where technology gifts people senses, skills, and strengths never before available.

The swallowable robot is only one scenario that researchers in Bristol in the west of England are working to make a reality, as part of research that seeks to use bots to enhance, rather than replace, people.