Robot Surgeon Goes Solo (on Pig Gallbladders) — and Nails It

Researchers successfully trained an AI-powered surgical system to autonomously perform key steps of a common laparoscopic gallbladder procedure—an exciting milestone for surgical robotics.

This August 2025 article by Kim, published in Science Robotics, describes how the Surgical Robot Transformer-Hierarchy (SRT-H) completed 17 critical subtasks (including identifying, clipping, and cutting the cystic duct and artery) on pig cadavers.

While independent robot surgeons are not ready for prime time, this makes me wonder if and when they are coming.

Learn More: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adt5254