Robot Surgeons to Take to the Battlefield One Day

A robot in an armored vehicle may one day be one of the most valuable pieces of equipment in the military, maybe even more valuable than its other robotic counterparts in the service.

The military is already working on a number of robots that will one day serve alongside grunts in the front lines. Soldiers will swear by this “bucket of bolts,” probably even salute it as they pass it by. Yet this one doesn’t carry any weaponry. This one’s literally a lifesaver.

Doctors Blake Hannaford, Jacob Rosen, Mika Sinanan, and Richard Satava, with funding from a Department of Defense medical research program, are working to perfect the technology for robot surgeons to be deployed to the battlefield.  Doctors working from back home can operate them by remote control and communication networks (like via satellites or the Internet) to treat soldiers who would otherwise die without going under the knife – a concept known as telesurgery.

A robot in an armored vehicle may one day be one of the most valuable pieces of equipment in the military, maybe even more valuable than its other robotic counterparts in the service.

The military is already working on a number of robots that will one day serve alongside grunts in the front lines. Soldiers will swear by this “bucket of bolts,” probably even salute it as they pass it by. Yet this one doesn’t carry any weaponry. This one’s literally a lifesaver.

Doctors. Blake Hannaford, Jacob Rosen, Mika Sinanan, and Richard Satava, with funding from a Department of Defense medical research program, are working to perfect the technology for robot surgeons to be deployed to the battlefield.  Doctors working from back home can operate them by remote control and communication networks (like via satellites or the Internet) to treat soldiers who would otherwise die without going under the knife – a concept known as telesurgery.

This isn’t the first robotic body mechanic we’ve featured here; we brought you a story last May about a robot that conducted heart surgery on a patient in Milan – unassisted. Robotic telesurgery is becoming more common as doctors and medical centers reach out to serve isolated communities hundreds – even thousands – of miles away from an operating room. A surgeon in Canada has already conducted more than two dozen telesurgeries on patients who were 250 miles away. Dr. Hannaford’s host institution, the University of Washington, has the only medical school in five states, and often has patients from as far away as Alaska.

There are a couple of differences between this field medic and the Milan robot, however. The latter specializes in heart surgery. It kinda also works on its own – no one needs to give it instructions there than to tell it what and where to cut. It’s got something like an AI whose “experience” is based on the real-world cases of some ten thousand heart cases (all worked on by human doctors).

The DoD-funded robot, on the other hand, really falls under the “telesurgery” department: its brain is the doctor working at the other end of the remote uplink. It is also more versatile than its Milan counterpart.  This robosurgeon has two arms that does all the work, capable of patching up injuries in the abdomen (and we presume the chest as well), the arms and the legs – wherever there’s a lot of blood pouring out when it shouldn’t be.

Another important difference that strikes us, once Dr. Hannaford and his colleagues have perfected the tech and ready to make its operational debut, is that this robot should be capable of operating in one of the most medically-demanding and abusive environments on Earth: the front lines of war. Anyone who’s seen “Black Hawk Down” will get the idea of what battlefield medicine is all about. Messy. Bloody. The casualties really are fighting for their lives. More often than not, they die. And the hospitals and doctors are often too far away to help in time. Having a good cutter near where the people get injured is always a plus – even if the cutter is remote-controlled.

While the tech will also prove undeniably useful for remote communities, the true test of this angelic machine may one day come from a gravely bleeding soldier whose life hangs by the thread of a robotic doctor operated by remote control. He may very well be thankful for it.

And maybe the next version of Battlefield will have robots coming every time we yell “Medic!”