In a first, surgical robots learned tasks by watching videos

December 30, 2024
Healthcare, Information Technology

By The Washington Post
Published on December 30, 2024

They don’t get fruitcakes or Christmas cards from grateful patients, but for decades robots have been helping doctors perform gallbladder removals, hysterectomies, hernia repairs, prostate surgeries and more. While patients lie unconscious on the operating table, robotic arms and grippers work on their bodies at certain stages in these procedures ― all guided by doctors using joystick-like controllers, a process that minimizes human hand tremor.

Now, a team of Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University researchers has reported a significant advance, training robots with videos to perform surgical tasks with the skill of human doctors.

The robots learned to manipulate needles, tie knots and suture wounds on their own. Moreover, the trained robots went beyond mere imitation, correcting their own slip-ups without being told ― for example, picking up a dropped needle. Scientists have already begun the next stage of work: combining all of the different skills in full surgeries performed on animal cadavers.