Surgical Robotics

A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, has designed a computerized imaging process to make minimally invasive surgery more accurate and streamlined using equipment already common in the operating room.

Researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK are using the feet of tree frogs as the inspiration for a tiny robot designed to crawl inside patients’ bodies during laparoscopic surgery. The tiny device is designed to move across the internal abdominal wall of a patient, allowing surgeons to see what they...

Surgical robots could make some types of surgery safer and more effective, but proving that the software controlling these machines works as intended is problematic. So say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory,...

For a skilled surgeon performing general surgery, tiny hand tremors are usually not a serious risk for patients. But what if the surgeon is operating inside the human eye or repairing microscopic nerve fibers? Scientists from the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering and Johns Hopkins...

Barrett Technology Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts, completed three Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts with Johnson Space Center. In 1989, the company worked with NASA on a Phase II to create a robotic arm, and in 1991, was again awarded a Phase II to create a hand. Nearly a...

Raven II, a robotic surgery system developed at UC Santa Cruz and the University of Washington, is being shared on an open-source basis with five other universities. Researchers hope that this will enable users to share software, replicate experiments, and collaborate in other ways — and ultimately...