🫡 A Surgical Robot Just Performed an Operation Completely Autonomously
The SRT-H robot, developed at Johns Hopkins University, has completed a key part of a gallbladder removal procedure entirely on its own without any human guidance. The team trained it on approximately 17 hours of real surgical video, including examples of mistakes made by humans and how surgeons fixed them.
The robot's "AI brain" has two modules: one interprets spoken instructions in plain language, and the other translates them into precise instrument movements. So, SRT-H can understand a command like "apply a clip" during surgery, and execute it like a human surgical assistant would.
✂️ What the Tests Showed
SRT-H performed 8 successful procedures on real animal organs. Each one took about 5 minutes and followed a 17-step process, from grasping tissues to removing the gallbladder. The robot also detected when something went wrong and adjusted its actions.
💡 Why This Matters
Da Vinci surgical robots—the same platform SRT-H is built on—have been used in operating rooms since 2000, but always with a human at the controls. A surgeon directs every action. SRT-H, by contrast, can make its own decisions in real time, even in unpredictable situations.
Would you trust a robot to operate on you?
❤️ — yes, no shaky hands
🎃 — no, I want a human surgeon
🤔 — I'll wait for human trials...
