Humanoid Robots Perform Gallbladder Removals on Pigs in UC San Diego Tests

Humanoid robots performed gallbladder removal surgeries on pigs for the first time in procedures conducted by engineers and surgeons at the University of California San Diego. The first operation used one robot with assistance from a surgeon. In the second, two robots completed the surgery together.

The findings appeared July 8 in the journal Nature. The robots, nicknamed Surgie by the research team, feature a head and arms and occupy less space in the operating room than conventional surgical systems. “As a proof of concept, it absolutely worked,” Dr.

Ryan Broderick, interim director of the Center for the Future of Surgery at UC San Diego, said. “The space constraints didn’t exist like in traditional robotic surgery. ” Dr. Shanglei Liu, a colorectal surgeon at UC San Diego, said the design could allow deployment on ships or in villages.

“You can imagine this device being deployed on a ship, in a village somewhere, in a smaller operating environment that’s not in major cities. ” Michael Yip, a UC San Diego professor, said the work shows humanoid robots can perform real procedures.