IN A new twist on medical training, researchers taught a surgical robot by showing it videos of real surgeons at work, according to research by John Hopkins University.
Instead of reciting every movement, they simply let the robot observe and learn, with impressive results: it can now handle a needle, lift tissue, and suture with nearly as much finesse as its well-trained human counterparts.
"It's a bit magical," admitted Axel Krieger, senior author.
"Just feed it camera input, and it figures out the rest."
Using imitation learning, the robot learned surgical tasks by analysing videos, similar to how people pick up skills from YouTube tutorials - but with far more precision.
The researchers fed the robot hundreds of videos captured by wrist cameras worn by surgeons, training it to understand the rhythm and angles of each movement.
It even learned how to recover from little mistakes, like if it drops a needle - no human guidance needed.
The team will next explore how to teach it full surgeries.
For now, this robotic student is well on its way, showing that a camera, some algorithms, and a lot of surgical footage could one day make robots an extra set of hands in the operating room.
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