Robot Stitches Wounds
A small pang for a robot, a big step for robotics: A video shows how a two-armed robot independently sutures a wound in imitation skin with six stitches.
Although robots are now involved in many procedures such as inguinal hernias and coronary bypasses, they only support surgeons – not replace them. This new research shows the way to robots that can work more autonomously in the operating room for very complicated tasks such as sewing and relieve the burden on the medical team. But the sewing robot could also be useful in other areas of robotics beyond the operating room.
“From a robotics perspective, this is a really challenging manipulation task,” says our own Ken Goldberg, a researcher at UC Berkeley and head of the lab that worked on the robot.