Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed an autonomous robot that can successfully perform organ removal surgeries. Named SRT-H for Surgical Robot Transformer-Hierarchy, the bot repeatedly demonstrated skills that matched experienced human surgeons.
The team trained SRT-H on videos of surgical operations and then had it conduct multiple gallbladder removals on its own on a realistic human-like model. It received no mechanical assistance, only voice commands, meaning the bot had to be able to understand and adapt to details of the situation in real time.
“This advancement moves us from robots that can execute specific surgical tasks to robots that truly understand surgical procedures,” said medical roboticist Axel Krieger. “This is a critical distinction that brings us significantly closer to clinically viable autonomous surgical systems that can work in the messy, unpredictable reality of actual patient care.”
