Friday, April 9, 2010

$2.5 Million Video Game


I spent this morning playing on a DaVinci surgery robot.  It was the coolest thing I've ever done in my life. I am in love with robotic surgery.

2 comments:

  1. incredible - I assume the things with the big red buttons are the robotic arms. how does it work? (high level using non technical words, please) :-)

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  2. What you're looking at is 3 robotic arms (red buttons) and the camera (black part) that all go inside small little holes in the skin. Then you use a controller (which is a lot like those virutal reality face masks and controllers that were around in the 90's) to control all the arms. Things that were cooler than I expected about this (1) the camera is actually two small cameras side by side, which is able, then, the transmit a 3-D image to the googles/hood that you are viewing through and (2) the robotic 'arms' have robotic 'wrists' and robotic 'fingers', so you can move them in really incredible ways.

    As to how it works- the arms, wrists and finger are all moved by a series of intricate cables that are controlled by the computer that's reading the surgeon hand movements.

    It's all a little bit of a gimmick- in that there are no studies that actually prove that the robot makes surgery safer or easier. But it's still an incredible piece of technology. It's cool to see in 3-D and have such control over movign the arms in so many different ways.

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