Surgeons just used robots that look like humans to perform surgery for the first time - New York Post

“This study shows that humanoid robots have a viable future in the field of surgery,” Michael Yip, a faculty member at the University of California San Diego and one of the paper’s senior authors, said in a press release.

“You can imagine these robots being deployed in remote communities where staffing is challenging, or in austere environments like search and rescue scenarios where a massive deployment of field medicine is needed in a short period of time,” he explained.

“This can help address the healthcare crisis not only in the United States, but also worldwide.”

The paper detailed two recent operations that put the technology to the test. But don’t expect to see a humanoid robot waiting outside the operating room the next time you go under the knife.

The technology is still in its early stages, and the paper notes that “key technical challenges” must be overcome before these robots can be used in human patients.

For one, the robots needed to be recalibrated several times during the procedures, making the operations take far longer than similar surgeries performed with today’s specialized robotic systems.

Liu said that kind of growing pain is common with emerging technologies, but tend to improve over time.

The team is also working to reduce the delay between a surgeon’s movement and the robot’s response, as researchers explore how the technology could to deploy care to patients remotely. Instead, they started with two commercially available Unitree G1 humanoid robots — which stand about 5 feet tall, weigh roughly 60 pounds and cost less than $20,000 — then modified them to handle the same types of instruments used in minimally invasive procedures.

That approach gave the robots a key advantage: unlike specialized robotic systems built for a limited set of tasks, a humanoid robot like the team’s machine, nicknamed “Surgie,” could potentially be adapted for a wider range of jobs both inside and outside the operating room.

The researchers also pointed to the robots’ smaller size, lower cost, and simpler setup as potential benefits compared with traditional robotic systems.