SRI
International, a nonprofit R&D organization, will conduct the first
demonstration of a teleoperated surgical robot in a zero-gravity environment
this week. The robot is controlled with a special interface by a skilled surgeon
hundreds of miles away.
The SRI robotic surgical system is designed to be stored in
a very compact space for space travel. Astronauts will reassemble the device
for use in the event of illness requiring surgical intervention.
The system was successfully
tested underwater in the Aquarius
undersea laboratory off the coast of Florida earlier this year. A Canadian
surgeon successfully utilized the device to perform a vascular suturing
operation from fifteen hundred miles away (see photo).
Now, however, SRI researchers are testing the device in the
extreme environment of zero gravity. The tests will be done over a period of
four days aboard a NASA C-9 aircraft. The plane undergoes a series of parabolic
flight maneuvers that simulates, for a brief period, the microgravity
environment of space.
"In
previous experiments, SRI successfully demonstrated how robots can be
manipulated remotely and set-up with minimal training. We are now extending
that technology to movement and weightlessness, critical elements of any space
travel program," said Thomas Low, director of SRI's Medical Devices and
Robotics program.
SRI-developed software is intended to help the robot
compensate for errors in movement that can occur in moments of turbulence or
transitions in gravitational field strength. The experiment will compare the
same surgical tasks performed by a physician who is physically present on the
plane with those performed remotely using the teleoperated robot.
SRI is pioneering other remotely-operated surgical systems;
they are working with DARPA
on the Trauma
Pod Battlefield Medical Treatment System; The trauma pod is used to treat
soldiers on the battlefield using advanced diagnostics and teleoperated
instruments.
Science fiction writers were arguably the first to imagine
such things; the telemedicine
apparatus from E.M. Forster's 1909 story The Machine Stops is a very
early inspiration to real-life roboticists. More recently, science fiction
writer Peter Watts vividly visualized a teleoperated medical mantis
that could perform surgery deep beneath the sea's surface.
Via SRI press release.
(This Science Fiction in the News story used with
permission of Technovelgy.com - where
science meets fiction)
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