They don’t get fruitcakes or Christmas cards from grateful patients, but for decades robots have been helping doctors perform gallbladder removals, hysterectomies, hernia repairs, prostate surgeries and more. While patients lie unconscious on the operating table, robotic arms and grippers work on their bodies at certain stages in these procedures ― all guided by doctors using joystick-like controllers, a process that minimizes human hand tremor. Now, a team of Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University researchers has reported a significant advance, training robots with videos to perform surgical tasks with the skill of human doctors. The robots learned to manipulate needles, tie knots and suture wounds on their own. Moreover, the trained robots went beyond mere imitation, correcting their own slip-ups without being told ― for example, picking up a dropped needle. Scientists have already begun the next stage of work: combining all of the different skills in full surgeries performed on animal cadavers. A new generation of more autonomous robots holds the potential to help address a serious shortage of surgeons in the United States, the researchers said.

Full report : Johns Hopkins and Stanford researchers say they trained robots with videos to perform surgical tasks with the skill of human doctors, even correcting mistakes.