Using imitation learning, a robot has learned to perform surgical procedures as skillfully as human surgeons, bringing the field of robotic surgery closer to true autonomy.

Watch the video to see the the da Vinci Surgical System robot  perform three fundamental tasks required in surgical procedures: manipulating a needle, lifting body tissue, and suturing: 

While the da Vinci system is widely used, researchers say it's notoriously imprecise. In this case researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Stanford have pioneered an approach that improves this situation which relies on the robot watching videos of surgeons executing surgical procedures. 

According to a report on the Johns Hopkins's website, the model combined imitation learning with the transformer, architecture that underpins ChatGPT. But while ChatGPT works with words and text, this model works with kinematics, a "language" that breaks down the angles of robotic motion into math. Their findings were presented last week at the Conference on Robot Learning in Munich.

According to lead researcher Axel Krieger, an assistant professor in JHU's Department of Mechanical Engineering:

"It's really magical to have this model and all we do is feed it camera input and it can predict the robotic movements needed for surgery. We believe this marks a significant step forward toward a new frontier in medical robotics."

Lead author, Ji Woong "Brian" Kim, a postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins commented:

"All we need is image input and then this AI system finds the right action. We find that even with a few hundred demos, the model is able to learn the procedure and generalize new environments it hasn't encountered."

As nearly 7,000 da Vinci robots are used worldwide, and more than 50,000 surgeons are trained on the system, creating a large archive of data for robots to "imitate."

Krieger added:

"The model is so good learning things we haven't taught it. Like if it drops the needle, it will automatically pick it up and continue. This isn't something I taught it do."

The researchers claim. the model could be used to quickly train a robot to perform any type of surgical procedure and are now using imitation learning to train a robot to perform not just small surgical tasks, but a full surgery.

More Information

Surgical Robot Transformer: Imitation Learning for Surgical Tasks (GitHub)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12998
Surgical Robot Transformer (SRT): Imitation Learning for Surgical Tasks by Ji Woong Kim, Tony Z. Zhao, Samuel Schmidgall, Anton Deguet, Marin Kobilarov, Chelsea Finn, Axel Krieger

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