It costs tens of thousands of yuan to "start up" the machine once. What are the advantages of surgical robots?

Review expert: Shi Yunlei, PhD, Department of Informatics (Robotics) at University of Hamburg, Germany

In recent years, artificial intelligence has gradually become one of the hottest fields in the science and technology community. Due to the need for intelligent transformation and upgrading, intelligent robots have ushered in new development opportunities. Related technologies are constantly maturing, and in our lives, more and more robots are beginning to help or replace manual work.

Source: Tencent

When talking about robots, the first thing that comes to mind may be the common sweeping robots at home, food delivery robots, or industrial robots waving huge mechanical arms in factories. With the maturity of scientific and technological means, robots have actually been used in surgery, nursing, rescue, health and other fields.

Robots have broad application prospects

Want to free your hands? Order a robot vacuum cleaner online. From consultation before ordering to delivery, the whole process may be completed by the robot! With the advancement of artificial intelligence technology and the reduction of core component costs, intelligent robots have been continuously innovating. During the epidemic, unmanned delivery has been widely used in various scenarios, realizing contactless delivery, which can not only reduce the risk of virus transmission, but also save a lot of human resources.

With the aging of society, young people are generally unwilling to engage in physical labor, resulting in a labor shortage and a sharp increase in labor costs. More and more factories have begun to use industrial robots to replace ordinary workers to solve the problem of "labor shortage" in some companies.

Source: di3renlei.cn

In addition, in the face of the aging problem, our country has invested a lot of money in the development of intelligent equipment in the medical field. Among them, nursing robots can provide personalized nursing, care and other services for the elderly. In the minimally invasive aspect of surgery, surgical robots are also increasingly used in clinical practice. There are also some special robots that are amazing and can replace people in dangerous work, such as fire rescue robots.

Unconsciously, robots have become increasingly closely integrated into our lives. Robots are involved in many scenes in our lives. It can be seen that the application of robots has broad prospects. This makes the editor sigh at the powerful force of contemporary science and technology!

Why do surgeons choose surgical robots?

When it comes to surgical operations, most people imagine professional doctors in surgical gowns holding various surgical instruments to perform operations. However, with the emergence of surgical robots , the surgical instruments in the hands of doctors have gradually become joysticks, and the robots execute the surgical instructions.

Since the 1980s, robots have been developing in the medical field. In 1992, the first robot-assisted orthopedic surgery was performed by the ROBODOC robotic surgery system developed by Integrated Surgical System. The surgery was a huge success, which marked the beginning of the application of robots in the medical field.

With continuous breakthroughs in technological research, more and more surgical robots have been incorporated into clinical surgery.

Source: intuitive.com

The da Vinci surgical robot is currently the most widely used surgical robot in the world. A set of da Vinci surgical robots costs as much as about 20 million RMB. In addition, the cost of each robotic surgery is also very high. So why are hospitals and doctors still willing to choose surgical robots?

In general, almost every type of surgical robot can make surgical operations more precise and the surgical process more standardized, ultimately improving the quality of surgery and thus the treatment effect. Taking the laparoscopic surgical robot as an example, its advantages are as follows: First, it can realize the six-degree-of-freedom instrument operation inside the human abdominal cavity in accordance with intuitive movement. Compared with the four degrees of freedom of traditional laparoscopic surgical instruments, it can achieve more precise and flexible surgical operations; second, it can provide proportional scaling movement, which can scale down the movement of the human hand and send the movement instructions to the operating robot, thereby achieving more precise operations; third, it can provide 3D stereoscopic vision to further ensure the accuracy of the doctor's operation; some other advantages include allowing doctors to complete the operation in a sitting position, recording the surgical process for review and learning, etc.

In addition, the Chinese government also attaches great importance to the development of surgical robots. During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the Ministry of Science and Technology launched a number of surgical robot R&D projects. Through continuous support, the independent R&D and industrialization environment of surgical robots has been well optimized and achieved excellent results. For example, the "Miaoshou" surgical robot of Tianjin University and the "Touma" surgical robot of Shanghai Minimally Invasive Medical Robotics have been approved by the China Food and Drug Administration and can already be seen in hospitals treating patients and saving lives.

The "reversers" in the fire

In recent years, more and more firefighting robots have gradually appeared in firefighting operations, making our firefighters safer when extinguishing fires. Firefighting robots are the "special forces" in the robot family, including firefighting robots, explosion-proof robots, rescue robots, smoke exhaust robots, and firefighting drones.

Source: Tencent

We all know that it is very dangerous to be at the fire scene. After all, human firefighters are flesh and blood in the raging fire. Explosions, thick smoke, and toxic gases in the fire will put the firefighters' lives in danger. The application of firefighting robots can solve this problem very well. Although they are small in size, their entire bodies are made of explosion-proof materials and can replace firefighters to enter high-risk environments with high temperatures, explosives, toxicity, and lack of oxygen.

In addition, the firefighting robot has its own camera, which helps firefighters understand the situation at the fire scene and make timely judgments. The application of firefighting robots is of great significance in avoiding or reducing casualties of rescuers and improving rescue efficiency.

Human-machine fusion: smart wearable devices

With the development of science and technology, we are ushering in an intelligent era where people, machines and objects are integrated with each other. Smart wearable devices are the bridge that enables people and machines to cooperate and integrate better. Smart wearable devices can play a significant role in smart medical care, decision support and human capacity enhancement. Our own perception ability is limited. Wearing wearable devices can better perceive various indicators of our body and form feedback. For example, the now popular smart bracelets and smart watches can monitor sleep, heart rate, running steps, sedentary reminders, etc.

Source: ofweek.com

Smart wearable devices come in a variety of forms, no longer limited to smart bracelets, smart watches, smart glasses, etc., but also include smart clothing, shoes and hats, etc. In addition, many institutions are actively developing wearable devices suitable for the blind. I think these technological products are warm, especially the good combination of people and machines, which can make machines better serve people.