The next time you go in for surgery, will your doctor be a five-foot-tall, 60-pound robot named Surgie? It would be great!
A team of surgeons and engineers at the University of California San Diego successfully completed the first two surgeries during preclinical testing using teleoperated humanoid robots.
Both surgeries were done in non-monkey mammals, so we’re not at the level of human surgery yet. But, it seems to be heading in that direction.
One operation involved a humanoid robot and a human surgeon teaming up to remove a gall bladder. A human doctor worked as an assistant during the surgery. However, the second operation, a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, was performed entirely by a team of two human robotic surgeons.
“This study shows that humanoid robots have a viable future in the field of surgery,” said Michael Yip of the UC San Diego Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, one of the senior authors of the paper.
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A robotic surgeon is more than just an impressive achievement. The team elaborated on the important and practical applications of humanoid robots such as Surgie on the operating table.
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“Remotely operated and autonomous robots have real potential to increase access to critical surgeries that patients would otherwise not have access to,” Yip told UC San Diego Today. “This could help address the health care crisis not only in the United States, but around the world.”
The team gave examples such as humanoid robots “deployed in remote communities where manpower is a challenge, or in difficult environments such as search and rescue situations where large deployments of field medicine are needed in a short time.”
Standing just five meters tall and weighing 60 kilograms also makes Surgie very mobile and compact in size.
However, there are still kinks that need to be worked out. The team says the humanoid robot had to be readjusted several times during the surgery, which increased the time it took to complete the procedure. In addition, latency issues are still being worked on. Latency, or the time it takes for a human to control the robot and the robot to respond, is very important when it comes to deploying these robots in remote locations.
Regardless of these issues, the team behind Surgie believes there is a role a humanoid robot can play in the field right now. Being a humanoid robot means that Surgie can move around and perform human-like tasks. The researchers envision situations where Surgie could work as an assistant in the operating room, getting surgeons tools and cleaning up after procedures.
“Many communities are struggling because of insufficient staff in the surgical team, which means that patients are not being treated,” said Yip. “Our goal is the workplace of the future, where humanoid robots and humans work together as an integrated team to bring procedures to those in need, both in traditional hospital settings and non-traditional, field medicine settings.”
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