Robotic surgury

[Alex Burman]

http://techdirt.com/articles/20060522/1432216.shtml
I just found this article on my tech dirt feed on my Google home page
I find it both fascinating and scary. The thought of having your life at the hands of a robot like that kinda unnerves me especially with the technology just starting to blossom like this. How ever its amazing that they were even able to automate the procedure giving robotic science a huge leap forward.

[Jaine Perotti]

Robotic medical technology similar this has been around for quite some time. I remember researching it with my rookie Lego League team for the Mission Mars challenge. We needed to come up with a way to repair robots that had broken on Mars. The kids came up with the idea of having a "Mars Garage" where the robots would be repaired using technology such as this, based on the Da Vinci Surgical System (http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/products/davinci_surgicalsystem/index.aspx). The difference between the surgery mentioned by the article and the surgery performed by the Da Vinci system is that this time, the surgery was performed WITHOUT any human input.

This technology is amazing, thats for sure. One thing the article implied which caught my attention is the possibility that surgical procedures may be "outsourced" to robots, and that the value of the human labor will be reduced. However, one must think about the realm of new job opportunities that are created by this new technology (in terms of the scientists/doctors/engineers needed to develop and improve its implementation). Medical expertise will always be needed in order to develop these technologies.

Very interesting article. Thanks for sharing it with us!

[billbo911]

http://techdirt.com/articles/20060522/1432216.shtml
I just found this article on my tech dirt feed on my Google home page
I find it both fascinating and scary. The thought of having your life at the hands of a robot like that kinda unnerves me especially with the technology just starting to blossom like this. How ever its amazing that they were even able to automate the procedure giving robotic science a huge leap forward.
Robots in surgery is not really something new. It has been around for many many years. If you are not too squeamish, follow some of these links. Personally, I find this stuff fascinating, I hope you do as well.
Knee Replacement (http://lims.mech.northwestern.edu/papers/kienzle95/kienzle95.pdf)
One of my favorites. (http://www.robodoc.com/eng/products.html) I actually got to see this in action in Sacramento.
Good basic descriptions (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5086401.html)
Cardiac surgery (http://jtcs.ctsnetjournals.org/cgi/content/extract/120/6/1171)
Excellent synopsis. (http://www.studentbmj.com/issues/02/07/education/230.php)

(I tried to limit the links to "non-surgical images" to help reduce some of the "shock" factor.) :o