In 1995, at the World Congress on Robotics Applications, there was something that caught the world's attention - the first time a robot performed surgery on a human being.
"Professor Robot, you are now invited to perform surgery." That command came from a hall in a Milan hospital.
In the hospital's operating room, a few kilometers from the hall, an ultra-specialized medical robot, accepted the command. It stabs a patient under general anesthesia with a silver needle and perfectly performs a prostate biopsy.
Professor Pisani, who sent the instructions to the robot, was able to see the needle performing the biopsy through ultrasound images, and the needle was able to cut accurately by transmitting coordinate data to the robot through a personal computer.
In fact, robots helping people perform surgery became a reality in 1985. Before that, robots (technically robots) also did a lot of work for the medical profession, such as taking radionuclides and doing nursing care.
When it comes to robots doing nursing work, you must think it's some robot that looks like a showy nurse lady, but it's not. Nursing robot is a special kind of medical robot, it can replace the nursing staff in the ward on the patient to carry out general nursing operations, so people also call it robot nurse.
The action of the nursing robot is controlled by the information sent by the patient, in order to control the convenience and ease of realization of the remote control, generally using sound signals as a source of control signals.
Nursing robot is generally composed of mechanical parts and control system two major components. Mechanical part is generally in the mobile trolley, the installation of multi-joint robotic arm and robotic hand, divided into single arm and double arm two kinds. A far cry from the look of a nurse lady.
Single-arm nursing robot has only one arm, in order to be able to complete the nursing action, its flexibility and freedom is relatively large, can help the patient to drink, eat, but also to complete the delivery of medicine nursing action. The mobile single-arm nursing robot can travel to care for several paraplegic patients.
The nursing operation of the nursing robot is controlled by the patient, and it can adjust the nursing action according to the patient's instruction. And in the process of multi-bed nursing tour, the nursing robot only accepts the priority of the mobilization signal, after it accepts the first patient's "order", as long as those nursing tasks have not been completed, it refuses to accept the signal sent by other patients. Only after the first patient's care tasks have been completed will the second patient be cared for.
The two-armed nursing robot system consists of a mobile two-armed nursing robot that can be pushed and a nursing cart that moves along a track. It performs its tasks by first being pushed and positioned by the caregiver at the bedside, and the patient gives commands through a microphone to control the movement of the robot.
The cart can also be controlled by the patient, with the robot supplying the patient's needs and the patient monitoring the execution of commands via a monitor.
With the development of high technology, robots are programmed with computer programs, it can be programmed to complete some very complex work. Now, some medical centers in various countries, surgeons are using similar robotic instruments to help them complete some complex and delicate surgery. Such as Canada's Toronto Children's Hospital neurosurgeon Jim Drake, has been successful for six children aged 2 to 10 years old to remove the brain tumor, and with other instruments is completely unable to do.
Since 1985, in the United States, a clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, neurosurgeons borrowed another robotic instrument, completed more than 1,700 cases of brain surgery, which allows doctors to know where the arteries are, where the veins are, and to know what may be wrong in the operation, so as to make the operation go smoothly.
The robotic medical instruments have improved surgical precision, halved the time it takes to perform a biopsy of the brain, and reduced the length of surgery and post-operative recovery hospitalization, which can reduce a patient's hospital bill by 30 to 40 percent.
It is believed that by the next century, there will be more kinds of robots to help doctors do all kinds of surgery and care work.