A humanoid robot has performed surgery for the first time in a major milestone for robotics and critical healthcare.
Working with surgeons from the University of California San Diego, a humanoid robot successfully carried out a gallbladder removal.
In a second operation, two humanoids working side by side performed a laparoscopic gallbladder removal. Both of the procedures for the proof-of-concept experiment were performed on non-primate mammals.
“This study shows that humanoid robots have a viable future in the field of surgery,” said Michael Yip, a faculty member in the UC San Diego Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and one of the paper’s senior authors.
“Remotely operated and autonomous humanoid robots have real potential for amplifying access to critical surgeries to which patients would otherwise not have access. This can help address the healthcare crisis not only in the United States, but also worldwide.”
The researchers behind the breakthrough said humanoid robots offer several advantages compared to specialised robotic surgery systems that are currently in use.
Humanoids are typically cheaper to produce, easier to deploy in remote areas, and far more versatile when it comes to the range of procedures and tasks they can carry out.
“It's a fraction of the cost and it takes a fraction of the space in an operating room,” said Shanglei Liu, MD, an assistant professor of surgery at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, one of the paper’s senior authors, who teleoperated the robot during the study.
“So it’s easy to deploy, anywhere from rural areas, to the battlefield, and even to space.”
The robots, nicknamed Surgie, were teleoperated by trained surgeons, though the researchers hope artificial intelligence developments will allow them to operate autonomously in the future.
“One of our goals is to develop the autonomous surgical assistant,” Dr Yip said.
“Many communities struggle with adequate staffing on the surgical team, which means patients are not being treated.
“Our goal is an operating theatre of the future, where humanoid robots and humans work side by side as an integrated team to deliver procedures to those in need, both in traditional hospital settings as well as in non-traditional, field medicine scenarios.”
The surgeries were detailed in a paper, titled ‘In vivo feasibility study of humanoid robots in surgery’, which was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
