Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot

Between torn muscle repairs and hernia operations, more than 45 million soft tissue surgeries are performed in the US annually. And all of them have been done with human hands so far. Researchers at Children’s National Medical Center (Washington, DC), however, have developed a “Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot” that can perform those operations not only autonomously, but better than human surgeons. “STAR consists of an industrial robot equipped with several custom-made components. The researchers developed a force-sensitive device for suturing and, most important, a near-infrared camera capable of imaging soft tissue in detail when fluorescent markers are injected.” A brief video clip shows how this works.      MORE WITH VIDEO

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