The Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, or STAR, is a surgical robot designed by the researchers at Johns Hopkins University. professor Axel Krieger at Johns Hopkins states that “the robot has done a better job than humans would have been able to do. ” The robot did surgery on four pigs.
STAR skillfully connected two ends of an intestine, which is a difficult procedure even for humans, known as intestinal anastomosis. This specific surgery, Soft-tissue surgery, is a special challenge for robots because of how random and unpredictable it is. If an issue occurs during a procedure, the robot must be able to quickly adapt and overcome the situation.
“What makes the STAR special is that it is the first robotic system to plan, adapt, and execute a surgical plan in soft tissue with minimal human intervention,” said research scientist and first author Hamed Saeidi.
STAR was guided by a machine learning-based tracking algorithm, developed by Johns Hopkins professor Jin Kang and his students. The robot also relied on a special endoscope. Furthermore, STAR is capable of generating three-dimensional point clouds of the surgical site and autonomously overlying it. This shows that there could be fewer human errors.
We are going in the right direction towards a brighter future where robots are able to save potential human lives. However, this could also have negative effects in the future for jobs. Robots will eventually replace almost all doctors in the upcoming years. Since nothing is perfect, the robots can malfunction, and if this does happen, it could be a disaster. Leading to people losing their life because of a malfunction. The same thing could happen, if the database is not secure enough, it could get hacked.
As with any new technology, there is a learning curve. Skilled robotic surgeons spend hours in surgical simulation laboratories and continue to do so, fine-tuning techniques and means to improve patient outcomes. It’s not a surgery to perform “once in a while,” at least if one wants to perform it well.
Sources:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninashapiro/2021/08/17/robotic-surgery-may-not-be-better-than-surgery-by-a-human-study/
https://www.khaama.com/the-robot-performs-a-tricky-surgery-on-pigs-without-human-aid-0289/
I really like the topic you are writing about. I find it very interesting how human engineering has grown for the better. I believe your article is showing the most important aspects of the original information in a well-constructed bite-size format. the addition of videos and photos is also very appricieted.
Thank you very much!
It’s such a big step in medicine and also robots industry. This innovation probably will affect the whole industry if such practices will be conducted on humans.
I think robots have great potential in medicine, especially in surgeries. Robots can carry on operations without any mistakes and that’s their biggest advantage. Nowadays a lot of surgeries are made incorrectly, and that often disables people for a long time.
Medical technology is expanding rapidly. I wasn’t expecting experimenting on a pig to be one of the steps… And yet, here wer are
We’ll wait a couple of years and instead of a pig there will be a real human… kind of terrifying
I think progress in medicine that we are making is unbelievable. Lots of surgeons get older and can’t operate because of their ageing skills. Maybe with experienc of a 60 year old surgeon this technology could get even better? I think lot of new diseases can be treated thanks to precision of robots. I feel safer now 🙂