Surgical robots in Asia

Despite the fact that the US is releasing and using most of the surgical robots, Asia is also on the rise.
"A robot, jointly developed by Chinese and Japanese scientists to work on vascular interventional surgery, made its successful clinical animal trial on 9 January 2012 through a remote control system linking Beijing and Kagawa. According to a briefing, the new system sharply cuts down the risk of a vascular intervention surgery, making the surgery more successful. WANG Tianmiao, a Chinese scientist involved in the experiment, said the design team installed for the first time a micro sensor at the end of the conduit to measure the possible collision between the catheter and blood vessels at a precision of 0.8 mm, effectively reducing the risk of surgery. Designed with a master-slave manipulator, the system can be controlled through a three-dimensional blood vessel navigation system, allowing the robot to perform vascular intervention surgery on instruction.
It took three years for the researchers from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Japan National Kagawa University, and Navy General Hospital to develop the robot. The project was funded by China’s National 863 Program and Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology with an amount of 20 million RMB ($3.17M). (The Ministry of Science and Technology People's Republic of China)"

Image credit: the MMSR system from the Beijing Inst. of Technology

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