One Surgeon, Two Humanoids: Samsung Medical Center Plans Surgical Demo

The Samsung Medical Center announced it intends to showcase one surgeon and two humanoid robots on Sept. 16, assessing whether machines are up to the challenge of performing some of the instrument-passing and assisting chores required by operating-room personnel. 

According to the hospital's announced planned event as contained in the supplied materials provided; one robot will be charged with the delivery of surgical instruments, performing the equivalent role of an operating-room nurse; and the second would control an endoscope in the operating-room and hold tissue open to provide the surgeon with access and vision.  

Both demonstrations represent research prototypes currently being evaluated in controlled simulated operating environments and not deployed in clinical settings. 

The proposed demonstration will showcase another humanoid simultaneously using instruments to cut tissue and suture it. That robot would rely on instructions provided remotely by a human surgeon that are broadcast to it via a monitor, translated by it, and then executed in the operating-room, and would not otherwise exercise its own operational decisionmaking. 

The assembled party is also being given an opportunity to physically maneuver robotic arms to hold tools and manipulate the tissue itself. 

The endeavor is driven by the Samsung Medical Center's own efforts in a Korean consortium called ORchestra, which has received funds from a government effort called Korean ARPA-H that has the goal of developing humanoid surgical assistants. Backing comes from the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute. Partners contributing to the initiative include AIDIN Robotics, Jeonbuk National University Hospital, Seoul National University, HAHEHO, Rainbow Robotics, and the Samsung Advanced Institute for Health Sciences and Technology. 

Partners include Rainbow Robotics, AIDIN Robotics, HAHEHO, Seoul National University, National Cancer Center and Jeonbuk National University Hospital, alongside the Samsung Advanced Institute for Health Sciences and Technology. 

The research focuses on support tasks that can be repetitive or physically demanding. The team identifies night shifts, emergencies and essential-care procedures as situations where shortages of skilled assistants could make robotic support useful.  

The demonstration in the proposed event seeks to put all these functional elements together around the operating surgeon, and no indication of safely performing these actions to address a patients' own physiological state in operating-room settings has been evidenced. 

The planned event will show how those capabilities work together around a surgeon. It will not establish that the robots can safely perform the same tasks during patient care. 

Before commercialization, the project still faces performance testing, preclinical work, clinician usability assessments, clinical trials and medical-device regulatory approval. Samsung Medical Center says the system does not independently assess a patient’s condition or determine how surgery should proceed.