Surgical Robot has force feedback system, plays no games

Played Trauma Center on the Nintendo DS before? That was one of the earliest hit titles on the portable game console which literally had my hands sweating as I had to “operate” on the patient with my stylus, and many a time my jittery hands failed me – good thing the game can save my progress, otherwise I would have put it up on eBay or craigslist a long time ago to other more steady hands. Well, why not alleviate some surgical procedures to robots if they are able to do it better than humans? That is what the Tokyo Institute of Technology tried to impress folks with by demonstrating their latest Surgical Robot that has the first pneumatic force feedback system of its kind.

It will function following the master/slave principle, where a doctor will operate on a patient remotely, controlling the robot from thousands of miles away. Sounds like a brilliant idea, but what about issues such as a sudden electricity cut? Surely no one would like to be left gutted in such a manner without any surgeon on hand to attend to emergencies when they happen.

On the bright side, at least the robot is a whole lot more steady than human hands ever could be, but they might be less flexible in many situations, and it will take some time for the surgeon to actually learn the limitations of the Surgical Robot.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Medical, Robots
Tags: Robot, Robotics, Robots