DOTmed July 11, 2025
A surgical robot developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University has autonomously performed a key portion of a gallbladder removal procedure without human intervention, marking a new step in the advancement of surgical robotics.
The system, named Surgical Robot Transformer-Hierarchy (SRT-H), was trained using videos of human surgeons operating on pig cadavers. During testing, the robot carried out a complex sequence of 17 surgical tasks; identifying ducts, placing clips, and cutting tissue — achieving results that researchers say were on par with expert surgeons. The work is detailed in a study published in Science Robotics.
Unlike earlier systems that followed rigid, preprogrammed plans in controlled environments, SRT-H responded dynamically to surgical scenarios. It adjusted to changes in anatomy, visual cues...
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