robosurgeon
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Researchers add eye control to Da Vinci robosurgeon
Eye-controlled interfaces are far from revolutionary, but giving one of the world's most famous robotic surgeons the ability to interpret eye movements is most definitely a huge leap forward in the pursuit of making operations less invasive. Reportedly, British researchers have implemented new software into the Da Vinci robosurgeon in order to enable human surgeons to "sit at a viewing console directing the movement of the robot's mechanical arms inside the patient's body." Additionally, the program can track eye movements and "build up a 3D map of the area of tissue the surgeon is looking at," and it seems as if the developments could eventually be used on a variety of other ER-based robots. Just make sure your doctor chugs a couple of Red Bulls before putting you under -- wouldn't want those eyes wandering aimlessly, now would we? (Psst, "no-go zones" are included, thankfully.)[Via Slashdot]
Robot surgeon performs world's first unassisted operation
We're sure that more than a few of our readers are keen on robots and interested in the latest developments in robotics, but how many of you would volunteer to be the guinea pig for the world's first unassisted heart surgery? Even though there were about a million doctors on hand to monitor Dr. Carlo Pappone's robosurgeon doing its detailed work on a 34-year-old Italian patient suffering from atrial fibrillation (heart flutters), we can't help but wonder if a juxtaposed "0" and "1" in the bot's code is all it would take to drive a scalpel somewhere that it isn't supposed to go. Luckily for the pioneering patient, the 50-minute surgery went off without a hitch, most likely due to the fact that the prototype bot has software containing data about some 10,000 real-world operations, and has already performed assisted procedures on at least 40 people. Pappone, who initiated and monitored the latest surgery from a computer in Boston while it was occurring in Milan, plans to release a commercial version of the unnamed robosurgeon later this month.[Via PhysOrg]
