Scalpel? Check. Swabs? Check. Open Source Robotic Surgeon? Pardon?

Adrian Bridgwater | Computer Weekly | January 20, 2012

Robotic surgery specialists at the University of Washington, in Seattle, are scrubbing up a new team of mechanical medics in the shape of the new "Raven" machines. With wing-like arms, the Raven handles many of the same extreme precision movements that the more expensive da Vinci Surgical System has been used for, but at a much lower price i.e. somewhere around US $250,000 for Raven as opposed to US $1.8 million for da Vinci.

Why do we need robotic surgeons? Because tiny incisions cause less tissue damage and so patient recovery is faster. Raven is also the first surgical robot to use open-source software as it runs a Linux-based operating system. The theory here then is that researchers (and perhaps even students) can work to modify and extend the original code with the aim of improving the system itself...