Surgical robot is trained to act autonomously

While robots have worked arm in arm with surgeons since 1985, they are now learning how to do some surgical procedures autonomously.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University found a way to train a surgical robot—med tech company Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci surgical system robot—to carry out medical procedures “as skillfully as the human doctors” after watching videos of those surgeries, according to a press release from Johns Hopkins.

The researchers trained the robot to do three typical surgical moves: manipulate a needle, lift body tissue, and suture tissue together. The robot reviewed “hundreds of videos” recorded by surgeons around the world using da Vinci robots to perform the tasks.

The robots learn through both imitation learning—a kind of artificial intelligence that teaches through copying—as well as machine learning, in which the model speaks in kinematics information, a process that translates robot movement into math. This is similar to how ChatGPT works, according to the release, but instead of using words, the model uses motion to communicate with the robot so it can mirror how the surgeon uses their robot.

“The model is so good learning things we haven’t taught it. Like if it drops the needle, it will automatically pick it up and continue," Axel Krieger, senior author on the study and assistant professor in the mechanical engineering department at John Hopkins, said in the release.

After presenting their research at the 2024 Conference on Robot Learning in November, , researchers are now working to train the robot to perform full surgeries beyond just the initial three tasks. The research is under review for publication in a medical journal, the Washington Post reported, and the team would need to complete clinical trials and receive FDA approval before this technology can be used on patients.

“We believe this marks a significant step forward toward a new frontier in medical robotics,” Krieger said.