Scientists Are Working To Give Surgical Robots The Sense Of Touch

Aadhya Khatri - Feb 06, 2019

Experts want to expand robot's ability to be a better assistant in surgical rooms, but they have a long way to go to replace human doctors completely.

Surgeries with the assistance of surgical robots are the desired future of medical science. In fact, they have been proving themselves as an invaluable asset in many operating rooms, there is still room for improvement.

Richard Trimlett, a cardiothoracic surgeon

According to Richard Trimlett, a cardiothoracic surgeon, surgical robots provide excellent control and perfect vision but they lack the sense of touch; as a result, he could not tell if he was causing damage or not. This drawback is serious and can be compared to an attempt to write without the ability to feel neither the paper nor the pen.

Nowadays, robots are not a proper substitute for real doctors, instead, they are more like an extension to expand human’s ability. The robot does not make its own decision on what to do, rather, the doctors behind them control their arms via joysticks or something like that.

Trimlet said that these arms were not able to feel the way a human hand does. However, he puts high hope on Carla Pugh’s research, which is expected to change the situation. For those unknown, Carla Pugh holds the director at the technology-enabled clinical improvement center of Stanford University.

She is trying to measure how much force surgeons use in surgical operations. The result of the research is intended to be used in surgeon training courses but according to Trimlet, it can be used to make more capable medical robots.

At the moment, robots are merely a tool to assist human doctors but in the future, if we can find a way to train them, they can do far more, said Martin Frost, CMR Surgical’s CEO, the company that made the world’s smallest surgical robots.

However, even if the robot’s sense of touch can reach the human’s level, they will not make human surgeons become obsolete, at least in the near future.

Frost said that the possibility of robots doing a certain percentage of the job is high, but we still had a long way to go to reach a point at which robots could treat and diagnosis on their own.