Tiny Robot Surgeons can be operated inside the body

The robotics innovation already rules the mechanical industries and also there are many research activities going on to boost up the technology yet more advanced by implementing artificial intelligence within the robot. Now the robots have entered into the medical field as well to achieve the significant activities handle by surgeons.

Vicarious Surgical, A company created by engineers from institutions such as MIT, Harvard University, and Stanford University who have a passion for innovation and robotics. The company has designed surgical robots that can be placed inside a human's body through a small incision to do surgery by surgeons from anywhere in the world by using Virtual Reality.

This system has the potential for combining their miniature robots with the ability to see inside the body by using virtual reality headsets.

“It wasn’t a ‘Eureka!’ moment, but more like two-or-three weeks as the vision came together,” says Sachs. “We can make robotics more human-like and virtual reality would give you that presence in the body.”

This miniature robot has two robotic arms with the same degrees of freedom and proportions of human arms and a camera that is fixed above the shoulders of the robot to monitor the human body.

The company is currently testing and analyzing its miniature robots in laboratories to improve its technology. Vicarious is also modeling the human abdomen and going to conduct various visual tests.

For surgeons using Vicarious’ technology, the primary feedback is virtual, Sachs says. They look through the “eyes” of the robot and can look down and see the robot’s arms. “We track the surgeon’s arm motion and mimics their arms and hands. The primary feedback is to create the impression of the presence of the surgeon as if they’d been shrunk down".

The company now has an additional $10 million in funding provided by Bill Gates for the development of technology.

“A lot of our long-term vision is about growing and scaling our technology to the point where it’s accessible not just to big cities and major hospitals in the U.S. and also the small cities and towns in the rural U.S. and around the world as well,” says Sachs. “Long-term it’s about the democratization of surgery that can come from surgical robotics.”

Read more: Bill Gates-backed Vicarious Surgical adds a virtual reality twist to robots in the operating room. (TechCrunch)