Robot Carries Out Operation By Itself

[JazzRemington]

"This operation has enabled us to cross a new frontier," said Carlo Pappone, who initiated and monitored the surgery on a PC in Boston, ANSA reported. Pappone is head of Arrhythmia and Cardiac Electrophysiology at Milan's San Raffaele University.

The 50-minute surgery, which took place in a Milan hospital, was carried out on a 34-year-old patient suffering from atrial fibrillation. Dozens of heart specialists attending an international congress on arrhythmia in Boston also watched.

Pappone has used the robot surgeon in at least 40 operations.

"It has learned to do the job thanks to experience gathered from operations on 10,000 patients," Pappone said, pointing out that the robot carries the expertise of several human surgeons used to boost its software.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International

http://www.physorg.com/news67222790.html

[loveme4whoiam]

How the hell does that work? To my understanding of how robotics works, they can only carry out a precise set of instructions exactly as they are laid out in its programming. For a robot to do something as complex and unscripted as a surgical operation requires an amazing level of adaptablility and environmental sensing. I mean, what if the patient was moved a centimetre to the left and the robot obeyed its programming and kept on operating without adjusting for the change in position?

If this is actually proven to have worked, I'm impressed with the creators of that robot. To bad the article isnt very detailed.

[Noah]

This is great to hear, all these advances, may be just a way for the coporations to make money in the meantime but what this is doing along with all other advancements, is creating a better chance of communism working..It's a fantastic achievement.

I wonder whether this will mean cheaper healthcare eventually..

[Janus]

I think this is good progress and this type of technology should be supported if all the things I hear about doctors and surgical operations are true.

Soon, we may be able to create robots that can do this totally unsupervised and therefore make the process much more efficient and safer.

There have been cases of doctors having to leave the operations to later doctors who don't really know what's going on and also reports of doctors operating on the wrong organs. :( These may be things that a robot could prevent.

[red team]

How the hell does that work? To my understanding of how robotics works, they can only carry out a precise set of instructions exactly as they are laid out in its programming. For a robot to do something as complex and unscripted as a surgical operation requires an amazing level of adaptablility and environmental sensing. I mean, what if the patient was moved a centimetre to the left and the robot obeyed its programming and kept on operating without adjusting for the change in position?

No, it's possible. How does a chess program work? It's not really artificial intelligence as the robot cannot form cognitive thoughts on it's own, but it's like a giant more elaborate chess program that's designed to make decisions by scanning over the possible moves of 10,000 surgeons in a particular scenario and then choose the best possible path of action using a predefined set of rules for what's considered "good".

[encephalon]

No, it's possible. How does a chess program work? It's not really artificial intelligence as the robot cannot form cognitive thoughts on it's own, but it's like a giant more elaborate chess program that's designed to make decisions by scanning over the possible moves of 10,000 surgeons in a particular scenario and then choose the best possible path of action using a predefined set of rules for what's considered "good".

Well, it isn't merely an expert system, as you imply here; this would be closer to true artificial intelligence than chess programs.

What people need to understand is that artificial intelligence, at its core, is no different than human intelligence. Think about what this robot had to do, and you see how impressively complex the thought processes of the robot had to be.

For one, every human body is different; organs, arteries, etc. are in generally the same areas and are configured generally the same, but there for all intents and purposes there is no set place and configuration for a heart. That's why doctors are generally hard to replace with robots: surgery involves a very conceptual understanding in order to apply them to the individual problems of the body they might be working upon. So the robot, indeed, had to be able to figure out exactly how the patient was configured. It had to locate the exact position of ther heart, etc. In short, it had to make decisions and recognize things on its own.

It DID have the "memory" of other human surgeons to work on, which at first would seem to indicate that it was merely a mechanical thing with exact details programmed in.. however, if that's the case, than human learning is no different. The entirety of human knowledge, actually, is just the same basic thing that the robot had access to. The robot had to use its knowledge of previous operations in the same way that a human doctor would have to, then fit it to that particular patient.

Since it does learn (according to the article), I'm guessing that the robot has neural network software.. which makes the process even more like a human case. Neural networks allow flexibility when using knowledge, and some degree of creativity or novel approaches in new problems. At least, neural networks are thus far the most successful techniques for creating a robot that is able to learn somewhat conceptually, and then apply the concept to new situations.

In any case: welcome to the world of artificial intelligence. This is probably going to play a much larger role in the near future.

[Physco Bitch]

Now this computer is a great idea- i have resevation on quiet a few surgegions. They all do a great job and i am greatful they are around- but after reading many horror stories about what can happen in hospitals it does kind of make me nervous to trust a human being- how could be tired- upset- ect...ect to do a job that a computer could with little hassle. I know there is always the chance for the computer to make mistakes - but i am sure they will remember to take medical swabs and opertion instruments out of you before sewing you up :D . But yet another great achievement for medical science :)

[liberationjunky]

Truely an amazing peice of information. As it would earlier stated this should deffently help pave the path for a revolution. This is just another great solution for how many believe that in a leftist society not many people will want to go through years of schooling for jobs such as doctors.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

This is trivial, but I wonder what the robot looks like :huh: :D