Surgeons Control Humanoid Robots in World-First Pig Surgery
▼ Summary
– Human surgeons remotely controlled humanoid robots to remove gallbladders from live pigs in a preclinical trial published in Nature.
– The teleoperated robots could enable remote robotic-assisted surgery in small hospitals, rural areas, battlefields, and space at lower cost and space requirements.
– The Unitree G1 humanoid robot used costs $13,500 for the baseline model, with dexterous hands pushing the price beyond $67,000.
– The G1 is significantly cheaper than specialized surgical robots like the da Vinci system, which can cost $500,000 to several million dollars.
– The G1 weighs 60 pounds and is 5 feet tall, making it more suitable for small clinical settings than specialized robots that weigh about 1,800 pounds.
In a breakthrough that blends robotics with surgical precision, humanoid robots have successfully removed the gallbladders from live pigs in a world-first experiment. But these machines didn’t act on their own. Instead, skilled human surgeons remotely controlled their movements from a distance, marking a major step forward in human-robot collaboration in medicine.
The teleoperated procedure, detailed in the journal Nature, involved two minimally invasive surgeries on live pigs. If this technology eventually clears clinical trials for human patients, it could allow surgeons to perform robotic-assisted surgery in smaller hospitals and clinics that cannot afford the massive, specialized surgical robots currently on the market.
“It’s a fraction of the cost and it takes a fraction of the space in an operating room,” said Shanglei Liu, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, speaking with UC San Diego Today. “So it’s easy to deploy, anywhere from rural areas, to the battlefield, and even to space.”
The team used a Unitree G1 humanoid robot, built by the Chinese robotics firm Unitree. The baseline G1 model, which has effectively non-functional hands, starts at around $13,500, with shipping costs between $300 and $1,200. Adding dexterous robotic hands,a critical upgrade for surgery,can push the price past $67,000. Still, that is a fraction of the cost of specialized systems like Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci Surgical System, which can run from half a million to several million dollars.
Beyond cost, the size difference is dramatic. The da Vinci system weighs about 1,800 pounds and occupies significant operating room space. In contrast, the Unitree humanoid stands just 5 feet tall and weighs only 60 pounds, making it far more practical for smaller clinical settings in remote or resource-limited areas.
(Source: Ars Technica)
