[p2p-research] Robots performing surgery with full autonomy

[Ryan]

  Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: Robots performing surgery with
full autonomy via Artificial Intelligence and Robotics by Awesom-o on
7/30/10
Robotic arms have been used in medical procedures for a while now,
providing surgeons a level of steadiness and precision that few human
hands can replicate. Now, however, things are moving forward to a
future where these robot arms will be able to perform such operations
almost entirely on their own.

At the present we are only talking about biopsies, or dealing with dead
patients. A safe way to start, but scientists at the Duke University in
North Carolina have already seen these robots achieve a 93% success
rate when cutting into prostate tissue. A dead turkey, whose flesh has
a similar texture to humans, was used in the experiments. The robotic
arms used ultrasound to locate the exact placement of the organs, and
then took real-time 3D information which told them what to do next.

The leader of the team, Professor Stephen Smith, explained that the
next test they will undertake is to try out the arm on a human
mannequin. This dummy will have a “stiff bra cup” with a grape embedded
inside, to mimic a cancerous lesion. The robot’s job will be to remove
this lesion while following correct medical procedure and saving the
person’s life (theoretically). One of the main problems that will need
to be addressed is improving the robots’ speed when it comes to
obtaining and processing the data from the ultrasounds, but a more
powerful processor and a more effective algorithm can help overcome
this challenge.

The professor is hopeful that success in these tests will pave the way
for a lot more robots doing surgeries on their own, not just biopsies.
This would save patients time and money, which is one of the biggest
problems in the healthcare industry today. Hopefully, they’ll be able
to offer some type of medical guarantee as well.

A brief video showing a medical robot undergoing trials follows.



[source]Scientific Memory Games: Improve your cognitive abilities.
Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to Artificial Intelligence and Robotics using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your
favorite sites
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100801/71280ee1/attachment.html>