Although the Sensei robot at St. Mary's Hospital in London may just be "one of four in the world," it certainly joins a packed
crowd of mechanical
colleagues that have been doing this whole "operation" bit for quite some time. As with most similar
alternatives, this one operates (quite literally, actually) by responding to a human surgeon's input given via joystick, and the arm is then able to
maneuver into more delicate and hard-to-reach locales in order to execute catheter ablation procedures. In the future, however, the Atari-lovin' doctor could be left out of the process
entirely, as an automated edition could eventually be programmed to find its own way to the target without any human intervention. Med school graduates losing residency positions to metallic
counterparts -- what is the world coming to?
