Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University have published a new paper that presents a surgical robot capable of performing certain operations like a human, simply by watching humans perform them.
The research team tested their idea with the popular da Vinci surgical system, which is often used for non-invasive surgeries. Programming robots usually requires manually inputting every move you want them to make. The researchers circumvented this by using the method of learning imitation, a technique that instills human-level surgical skills in robots by letting them observe how humans do it.
The researchers collected hundreds of videos recorded by wrist-mounted cameras that showed human doctors doing three specific tasks: handling needles, lifting tissue and suturing. The researchers used essentially the kind of training that ChatGPT and other AI models use, but instead of text, the model absorbed information about how human hands move and the tools they hold.
This kinematic data essentially turns the motion into math that the model can apply to perform the processes on demand. After watching the videos, the AI ​​model could use the da Vinci platform to mimic the same techniques. It’s not too different from how Google is experimenting with teaching AI-powered robots to navigate spaces and complete tasks by showing them videos. “It’s really magical to have this model and all we do is feed it data from the camera and it can predict the robotic movements required for the surgery.
We believe this marks an important step forward toward a new frontier in Medical Robotics,” lead author and JHU assistant professor Axel Krieger said in a statement. “The model is so good that it learns things that we haven’t taught it. Like if he drops his needle, he will automatically pick it up and continue. That’s not something I taught him to do.
The idea of ​​an AI-controlled robot wielding blades and needles around your body may sound scary, but the machines’ precision may make them better than human doctors in some cases. Robotic surgery is becoming more common in some cases. A robot that performs complex procedures independently may actually be safer, with fewer medical errors. Human doctors could have more time and energy to focus on unexpected complications and the more difficult parts of a surgery that machines are not yet able to handle. The researchers plan to test using the same techniques to teach an Artificial Intelligence how to perform a full surgical procedure.
They are not the only ones pursuing the idea of ​​robotic healthcare with the help of artificial intelligence. Earlier this year, dental AI technology developer Perceptive demonstrated the success of an AI-guided robot performing a dental procedure on a human without supervision.
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