Humanoid Robots Controlled By Surgeons Did World-First Operation On Live Pigs (arstechnica.com) 24
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Humanoid robots have surgically removed the gallbladders from living animals in an unprecedented medical experiment -- but not as autonomous machines capable of replacing human doctors. Instead, skilled human surgeons remotely controlled the robots' movements in a new example of human-robot teamups. The teleoperated humanoid robots completed two minimally invasive surgeries by removing gallbladders from live pigs during a preclinical trial that was published in the journal Nature. If this approach eventually proves clinically ready for human patients, surgeons could use such humanoid robots to remotely perform robotic-assisted surgical care in smaller hospitals and clinics that lack the resources to install specialized but expensive surgical robots.
The experiment used a Unitree G1 humanoid robot made by leading Chinese robotics company Unitree. The cheapest baseline G1 model with effectively non-functional hands has a starting price of $13,500 and shipping costs ranging between $300 and $1,200, whereas adding crucial upgrades such as dexterous robotic hands can easily push the cost beyond $67,000. But such humanoid robots made in China are still significantly cheaper than specialized surgical robots like Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci Surgical System, which can cost anywhere between half a million dollars and several million dollars. The specialized surgical robots can also weigh about 1,800 pounds and take up considerably more space in operating rooms. By comparison, the Unitree humanoid robots, standing at 5 feet tall and weighing just 60 pounds, may be more suitable for smaller clinical settings in remote areas.
The experiment used a Unitree G1 humanoid robot made by leading Chinese robotics company Unitree. The cheapest baseline G1 model with effectively non-functional hands has a starting price of $13,500 and shipping costs ranging between $300 and $1,200, whereas adding crucial upgrades such as dexterous robotic hands can easily push the cost beyond $67,000. But such humanoid robots made in China are still significantly cheaper than specialized surgical robots like Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci Surgical System, which can cost anywhere between half a million dollars and several million dollars. The specialized surgical robots can also weigh about 1,800 pounds and take up considerably more space in operating rooms. By comparison, the Unitree humanoid robots, standing at 5 feet tall and weighing just 60 pounds, may be more suitable for smaller clinical settings in remote areas.
Pig Destroyer (Score:3)
Will this be part of Grand Theft Auto VI? Even if only with the deluxe edition, sounds like it would make a great minigame.
This was already done autonomously (Score:4, Interesting)
A different group showed that the whole transplant can be done autonomously with no human involvement. Reference: https://hub.jhu.edu/2025/07/09... [jhu.edu]
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This may be so, but if I were going under the knife I'd want a real human using telepresence rather than a fully autonomous AI. Machines aren't conceptually nimble enough yet when it comes to outliers and unexpected complications.
Re: This was already done autonomously (Score:3)
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... it means healthcare can be so much cheaper and more reliable.
That may be true in some parts of the world. In others, it may merely make healthcare more profitable.
Even the reliability gains you posit may be sacrificed to the profit gods. I foresee speeding up evaluations and procedures, and shortening post-op monitoring, such that the quality of outcomes from robotic surgery is about the same as it is now with human surgeons.
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Agreed. My Dad was a surgeon too but one thing has become blatantly obvious just from the experiences of family members in 2 states in the U.S.. 1) Nurse practitioners tend to be the front line, not doctors, and 2) there is an extremely significant disparity between the diagnostic quality and offered outcomes when you compare one of the absolute top doctors in his field who handles a given type of surgery repeatedly, to basically anyone else.
If robots can in any way safely and reliably assist so that the kn
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Healthcare is expensive largely because skilled physicians are scarce. Whether that's due to the difficulty of medical training, limited medical school capacity, or both, the result is the same: there are far fewer qualified surgeons than there are people who need them. Scarcity drives up the value of their time.
Imagine a world where anyone could become a competent brain surgeon simply by reading "Brain Surgery for Dummies". In that world, surgical labor would be as abundant as barbering, and the cost of su
Unprecedented? Really? (Score:1)
A remote (2400km away) surgery intervention has already been made in March 2026 in Europe on a human patient, as indicated in this
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2012 [wikipedia.org]
2023 [wikipedia.org]
2001 [nature.com]
1980s [imperial.ac.uk]
I'm sure they have an innovation here, but it's not clear what, having been filtered through layers of scientific journalism.
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A remote (2400km away) surgery intervention has already been made in March 2026 in Europe on a human patient, as indicated in this /. URL [slashdot.org]
Or maybe you need to be better at RTFA. These where ------> humanoid robots -------. Not specialized divici style robots.
So ... (Score:1)
They kept out that last detail (pig) (Score:2)
...after all the bots were done high-fiving each other
The real takeaway here is the software gap... (Score:2)
If the robot is capable of performing the surgery with a human controlling it, then the gap is simply software to a fully autonomous robot surgeon.
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At that point decent emergency healthcare in remote locations like the upper Andes, remote mining camps, container ships, and antarctic research stations becomes possible. Parachute the robot surgeon in to the site, set up the mobile operating theater, and carve away. For that matter, it would make sense to send one along on lunar and deep space missions, both as surgeons and general fetch-and-steps.
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Parachute the robot surgeon in to the site, set up the mobile operating theater
I suspect the answer is to get the cost to the point where there is just a robot on board every ship, or site. Just like the EMS hologram on star trek.
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I suspect the answer is to get the cost to the point where there is just a robot on board every ship, or site.
I think you over-estimate the value assigned to sailors' lives by companies owning ships. There is a reason why the vast majority of ships sail under the flag of some 3rd-world country that does not mandate any decent safety measures or worker's rights.
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Ship or spaceship.
Robots have been doing that for years (Score:2)
Did somebody place a melon on this robot and call it 'human'?
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RTFA. Humanoid robots.
Smaller hospitals? (Score:2)
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purchase a multi-million dollar robot to perform their operations? Sure, Jan
The target price for these robots is $25K each.