The University of Nebraska-Lincoln invented a surgical robot that was sent to the International Space Station, or ISS, and successfully conducted a remote-controlled surgery with it, according to a new press release.
Called spaceMIRA for short, this Miniaturized In vivo Robotic Assistant was in development for two years for its space mission, but MIRA in whole was started almost 20 years ago, per the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
How was the surgery conducted?
According to CNN, spaceMIRA is about the size of a microwave and weighs only 2 pounds. It has two robotic arms that will mimic human arms and hands. The left arm will clasp itself to an object while the right arm cuts.
Originally, spaceMIRA was supposed to perform surgery using pre-programmed information without needing the help of humans, according to the team that built spaceMIRA. This was meant to avoid what’s called latency, a “delay that occurs while awaiting a signal to travel from the Earth to the International Space Station and back,” according to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
After doing 15 controlled surgical tests with spaceMIRA on Earth, it was time for the team to send it up to the ISS and test the robot, per CNN. To replicate human tissue, they used rubber bands.
CNN reports that six surgeons located in Lincoln, Nebraska, would each perform a dissection of the simulated human tissue under pressure, a task meant to simulate what normally occurs in an operating room, and overall it was seen as a success.
Surgeons normally have seconds in order to stop bleeding during surgery, so they had to take into account the latency time between spaceMIRA and their location in Nebraska. In an interview with CNN, one of the surgeons helping spaceMIRA shared that they saw only a 0.85 second latency delay.
Future goals for spaceMIRA
CNBC reports that this robot could be useful in future space missions, whereas the team behind spaceMIRA say it can be used on Earth as well in certain circumstances.
According to the team’s statement, almost one-third of counties in the U.S. don’t have a surgeon, even if there’s a hospital nearby, and there’s been a decline in surgeons, according to multiple reports.
Professor Shane Farritor from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a co-founder behind MIRA, shared that, “Remote surgery has the potential to address these issues so patients can get the health care they need.”