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Robots Might Allow For Space Surgery

Posted by Zonk on Sat Oct 29, 2005 05:33 PM
from the hold-your-hand-steady dept.
Space Robotics
An anonymous reader writes "Robots might allow for delicate surgeries in space, reports the Washington Post." From the article: "The tiny, wheeled robots, which are about 3 inches tall and as wide as a lipstick case, can be slipped into small incisions and computer-controlled by surgeons in different locations. Some robots are equipped with cameras and lights and can send back images to surgeons. Others have surgical tools attached that can be controlled remotely ... Officials hope that next spring, NASA will teach astronauts to use the robots so that surgeries could one day be performed in space. Delays in communication because of the distance to space would mean surgeons on earth would have tell astronauts what commands to give the robots"
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  • delay? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2005, @05:39PM (#13906455)
    yeah but isn't the same delay present in telling the astronauts what to do as well?

  • Gonner (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Gogogoch (663730)
    I'm afraid that unless you take a surgeon with you, if you need an operation in space you're a gonner. Robots... yeah right.

  • ludicrous! (Score:3, Funny)

    by bogaboga (793279) on Saturday October 29 2005, @05:43PM (#13906474)
    Are the creators of this technology saying that we shall at some point in future, have to send patients into space in order for them to have surgery? How expensive! To me, the whole project sounds ludicrous.

  • Space Surgery? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AppleFever (917782) on Saturday October 29 2005, @05:43PM (#13906478)
    I read the article, but why do we need to do surgeries in space? I would estimate that no more than 10 people are ever in orbit at one time, and usually we don't send up people to space in need of surgery.

    _ _ _ _ _
    Got Teeth?
    http://www.doctorgallagher.com/ [doctorgallagher.com]
    • I get your point about people in space being unlikely to need surgery, but if I was going into orbit or even if manned Mars mission ever become likely (not something I'm expecting anytime soon) I think I'd feel better if there was something that could help if I had some kind of accident that left me needing surgery
    • I didn't read the article, but if we're going to send people to mars we're looking at probably an 18-month round trip, minimum. So we need to be able to have them perform surgery in case of an emergency, and having a surgeon onboard would be one less valuable berth.
      • True not taking a doctor with you would leave more room for others, but would you really go on an 18 month journey without a doctor? Why not take the surgeon along who has can not only heal but deal with other biological studies.(Plants, human behavior, etc)

        • Would you want to get surgery from a doctor who hasn't done any surgery in 40 months? (18 there, 18 back, plus several months on Mar - emergency comes up just before you get back home, too urgent to wait) Particularly if the surgeon is not a specialist in that area?

          These device seem like a much better idea, particularly if they come up with an "AI" that can do the more common surgeries without help once inserted.

        • True not taking a doctor with you would leave more room for others, but would you really go on an 18 month journey without a doctor? Why not take the surgeon along who has can not only heal but deal with other biological studies.(Plants, human behavior, etc)

          With the amount it's costing and so forth, I'd want the very best scientists going along. As long as they're able to get there, all else is secondary. And as another reply said, a surgeon who isn't a specialist in your area, which is the best we can usu

          • With the amount it's costing and so forth, I'd want the very best scientists going along. As long as they're able to get there, all else is secondary. And as another reply said, a surgeon who isn't a specialist in your area, which is the best we can usually hope for, will probably do better with these robots than without them.

            My take is that they'll send a doctor along for the very reason you site, namely that they're sending along the best in a very expensive manner. It'll be stupid to kill someone that

      • I'd have thought latency would be an issue at any distance from earth orbit, but I ain't read the article either, so maybe that's dealt with somehow. Anyway, I can see uses for such a thing on earth, as well as in orbit.
        • From the article, and the post. Delays in communication because of the distance to space would mean surgeons on earth would have tell astronauts what commands to give the robots

          Also, this device is also expected to be used in the battlefield, and I assume rescue operations and other remote circumstances. At $200 a robot, these are indeed sort of expensive (single use, often multiple robots per procedure) but not outrageous for certain uses.
      • So we need to be able to have them perform surgery in case of an emergency, and having a surgeon onboard would be one less valuable berth.

        Some MDs are also PhDs; they focus on research and development, and not just cutting. Depending on their research specialties, some are highly talented physicists and chemists.

        One would expect there to be significant cross-training of the entire Mars crew; a surgeon who went along would be expected to do useful work while he wasn't needed in his medical capacity (i.e

    • I'm sure it will wind up primarily a battlefield technology. (The article does mention military applications). The inital focus on space just means the developers got their funding from NASA instead of DARPA, that's all.
    • It's nothing to do with Space Surgery(TM), and everything to do with outsourcing.

      After all, why would you hire the ludicrously expensive local surgeon when you can hire an equally-skilled Indian living in Bangalore (right next door to the Dell phone support center) to use these robots to work remotely.

      Soon, you'll be able to have your surgery done at WalMart, and the only people they have to pay directly are the anesthesiologist and maybe a couple of post-op nurses.

      Oh, and don't think that WalMart won

    • About the closest comparison to something on Earth would be the South Pole researchers, who are stuck there (particularly during the southern hemisphere's winter) w/out recourse to outside help. A little research drug (no pun intended) up a timeline [southpolestation.com] of events at the station. What's interesting from just a cursory review of it is the number of cases of apendicitis in the first few years of the station. There has also been at least one case [70south.com] of a torn knee tendon.

      So in the space arena, whether it's requir

  • OK, but (Score:5, Insightful)

    by $RANDOMLUSER (804576) on Saturday October 29 2005, @05:46PM (#13906491)
    I think I'll get excited about this when they start using it locally as a superior technology to regular surgery. I mean, if this is such a great option, why aren't they using this as a replacement for an 8-inch incision?

    • Re:OK, but (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anti_Climax (447121) on Saturday October 29 2005, @06:07PM (#13906568)
      They already do. [mos.org]

      The best part is that the controls can scale large movements down to very fine ones allowing procedures that aren't possible by hand, as well as filtering out normal muscle tremors. Though I'm with you, I'd like to see it used more often.
    • I mean, if this is such a great option, why aren't they using this as a replacement for an 8-inch incision?

      I bet it won't be long before they use it as a replacement for the 6-figure surgeon. Let the medical outsourcing begin!

      • I would be very happy if this thing could replace surgeons, for several reasons:
        • It'll only do so if it's better than what a surgeon could do.
        • If it's cheaper (which is far from guaranteed) so much the better.
        • It'll free up doctors to do other tasks, which is important given the doctor shortage (albeit one largely created by the doctors trade unions artificially restricting the amount of training places available).
        • I don't think you understood what I was suggesting. I think eventually surgeries will be performed by doctors but they will be doctors in third world countries where they work for the equivalent of a few dollars an hour. It will be the end of one more high paying profession in the US and contribute toward the slow decline of our economy. I fully expect to someday meet a former medical doctor working at Wal-mart as a greeter, and like all Wal-mart employees he will do his shopping at Wal-mart because that is

  • Remember HAL-9000? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2005, @05:50PM (#13906503)
    The minute you go under the anesthesia, it's over.

  • Solving tomorrow's problems today. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Isldeur (125133) on Saturday October 29 2005, @05:51PM (#13906504)
    Robots might allow for delicate surgeries in space,

    Rrright. I'm glad we're solving *tomorrow's* problems today. Shouldn't we first actually get a space program?

    • I would much prefer these problems solved before we go. I'd hate to be on a trip to mars, and die on the way because nobody knows how to do some surgery that I unexpectedly need. I want all bases covered, with enough redundancy that if something goes wrong it isn't fatal.

      Remember Apollo 13? Something like that could not be recovered from on the way to mars, so they have to have other way to recover. There are plenty of other disasters that could happen that need to be planed for. (with enough suppl

    • At first, I was thinking the same sort of thing. It would be nice to have that as a problem. However, there is a rosy side to this. It really is surprising how much teleoperations hasn't advanced in the past bunch of decades. If this sort of project finally gets usuable teleoperation equipment and other remotely guided robotics into the hands of industry, then maybe we are getting somewhere.

  • latency (Score:5, Interesting)

    by frankmu (68782) on Saturday October 29 2005, @05:52PM (#13906508) Homepage
    man, as a surgeon, i would really hate the ping time. you can bleed alot from an arterial bleed.
        also, low gravity surgery would require new techical skills. we actually depend on gravity to keep bowel from floating around and obscuring our view. what do bleeders look like in low-gravity? for the mars mission, will people just have their gallbladder, appendix and uterus out before the trip?
    • Quite honestly, if there was a high ping time to the robot, I would hate more as the patient than the surgeon. As far as a Mars trip, nothing will have to be removed if you have somthing like this or you have a surgeon/medic on board.
      • huh? even if you have one the original poster said why it won't solve the problem: surgery on zero-g is much more difficult and more importantly no knowledge from experience of what to do/what can go wrong/etc. Not to mention that you have a surgeon who hasn't done surgery in a while, may not have ever done the surgery you need done and whose experience is limited to earth gravity.

        Of course then you have the lack of a medical team, "nurses" with little experience, lack of the optimal equipment, and probably

  • Rama II (Score:2, Interesting)

    by aitikin (909209)
    Am I the only one whose first thought upon reading this headline was Rama II where an appendicitis is performed?

  • Lipstick (Score:4, Funny)

    by Phroggy (441) * <slashdot3NO@SPAMphroggy.com> on Saturday October 29 2005, @06:06PM (#13906558) Homepage
    The tiny, wheeled robots, which are about 3 inches tall and as wide as a lipstick case,...

    Oh come on, Slashdotters are supposed to know how big a lipstick case is? ;-)
  • "Louey isn't with us anymore..."

    Say what you want about the eco-hippie theme, that movie had some nice AI concepts.

  • ...from the terrible secret of space!
  • What are their demands? I say we give them whatever they want.
  • Surgeon on Earth - "Damn lag!"
  • Delays in communication because of the distance to space would mean surgeons on earth would have tell astronauts what commands to give the robots

    And issuing the command to a human who then has to issue the command to a robot will somehow introduce less delay than the surgeon issuing the command directly?
     
  • can be slipped into small incisions "I think you're bugged." Agent Smith would *love* this idea.

  • Ob. Trek (Score:4, Funny)

    by (negative video) (792072) <me@@@teco-xaco...com> on Saturday October 29 2005, @07:24PM (#13906807)
    Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a robot driver!
  • how is this thing supposed to stop bleeding? How will it suck out the excess blood? What happens when blood and other fluids get all over the camera lens? Will it come with optional wipers installed? What will it be able to do at all inside a body with those 3 claws? I can't see how it will saw pieces together or how it can do anything except for clamping. And this robot will cost 200 bucks only? I say hogwash. Don't believe in this at all.

  • Inverted Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Minna Kirai (624281) on Saturday October 29 2005, @09:46PM (#13907200)
    This is SO pointless. Remote-controlled robots to perform surgey in space, on the slight chance that an astronaut has an unforseen urgent emergency? Why not just build robots to do the astronauts' jobs via remote-control, and skip this trickiness?

    Consider the relative difficulty of invasive surgery in comparison to installing a PCI card or changing the lubricant in an automobile. Repair work on a machine (which can have been intentionally designed for easy servicing) is incomprably simpler than trying to heal a live human by cutting her up.

    The differences are magnified at orbital or interplanetary distances, were telecommunications lag comes into play. Even a few seconds delay between commands could have a human patient bleeding to death, but machines can be powered down before maintenance, meaning NASA can easily take 60 minutes to direct each individual step (and then wait the same time to get images of the result).

    Once we've got robots that can reliably fix a flat-tire by transcontinental remote-control, then we can start to think about robosurgery. Walk before you can run; solder before you can suture.

    (Furthermore, if something goes wrong, a dead astronaut killed by a misaligned surgeon-bot is more expensive than a satellite disabled by a mechanic-bot, once all the costs from negative publicity have been factored in)
  • Hear about the lagging space-based circumcision robot? It screwed up and got the sack.

    "got the sack" [wikipedia.org] Brit slang
    • I'd assume the robots would require a large number of fairly small steps (such as posistioning the camera and instrument could take many many movement instructions), where as communicating with a human can be done on a more conceptual scale - make a cut here - tie of that blood vessel ect.
      Not to mention being able to communicate a series of critical instructions at the same time. "Make a cut there - but for the love of god don't cut " can be sent in one message to another person, but a surgeon on the groun

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