Teleoperated Humanoid Robots Perform First Surgical Operations on Living Animals
Teleoperated Humanoid Robots Perform First Surgical Operations on Living Animals
A group of researchers from the University of California San Diego has used two teleoperated humanoid robots to remove the gallbladder from live pigs, marking a milestone in robotic surgery: never before had such machines operated on living subjects. The study, published in the journal Nature, describes an experiment that aims not to replace surgeons but to verify whether general-purpose and relatively low-cost robots can meet the precision standards required in the operating room.
The system, nicknamed "Surgie" by the team, is based on the Unitree G1, a general-purpose humanoid robot produced by the Chinese company Unitree, standing about 1.5 meters tall and weighing 27 kilograms. This is not a machine designed specifically for surgical use: researchers have created physical adapters to allow the robot to handle standard laparoscopic instruments and have developed software capable of translating the surgeon's hand movements into precise actions of the tools.
The surgeon operates from a console equipped with a stereoscopic viewer that provides a three-dimensional view of the interior of the patient's body and controls the attachment or detachment of the robotic hands via a pedal. The operational principle mirrors that of existing robotic surgery systems but is applied to a humanoid-shaped body.
Two surgeries have been conducted, both successfully completed. In the first case, a single robot operated alongside a human surgeon acting as an assistant. In the second case, two teleoperated robots managed the laparoscopic instruments together, without direct human assistance in the operating field. In both instances, the goal was the removal of the gallbladder from pigs.
A central element of the research concerns the cost-effectiveness of the solution. A base Unitree G1 has a starting price of about $13,500; with the addition of hands equipped with the necessary dexterity for surgery, the cost can rise to about $67,000. This amount, however, is significantly lower than specialized surgical systems currently on the market, such as the da Vinci by Intuitive, which can range from half a million to several million dollars and weighs around 820 kilograms, occupying a considerable space in the operating room. The humanoid, on the other hand, can move in spaces designed for people.
"It’s a fraction of the cost and takes up a fraction of the space in an operating room. It's therefore easy to distribute, from rural areas to the battlefield, to space," said Shanglei Liu, associate professor of surgery at UC San Diego and one of the senior authors of the study.
The system is still far from being ready for use on human patients. The surgeries took significantly longer than those achievable with mature systems due to the repeated recalibrations necessary during the operation. The limited range of the robot's arms, just 450 millimeters compared to 1.6-1.8 meters of an adult, also restricts the operators' movements.
There is also the problem of latency to resolve: the delay between the surgeon's movement and that of the robot measures in the hundreds of milliseconds, whereas the ideal threshold for a surgical intervention should remain below 150. In practical tests, both trainee and experienced surgeons were found to be faster using traditional robotic systems compared to Surgie.
Michael Yip, an engineering professor and another senior author of the study, does not envision a robot replacing the surgeon but rather an "autonomous surgical assistant" capable of preparing the room, retrieving instruments, and tidying up at the end of the procedure. Full autonomy remains a distant goal: the scientific community agrees that general-purpose robots are not yet capable of safely operating alongside people without direct human supervision.