Leonardo da Vinci was known for many things: painting, sculpting, and of particular interest to RobotCentral readers, a French king commissioned him to build a walking mechanical lion. Which for some reason could produce a chest full of flowers on demand (probably because Leo had not yet invented the chainsaw). But he also became an expert at topographic anatomy, dissecting and studying human and other animal bodies and producing many detailed drawings of both the beautiful and icky aspects of physiology. So it seems appropriate that his name be lifted and affixed to a robotic surgery system. We would have preferred “Ole Elctro-Slicey”, but we just don’t respect history as much.
Among your many daVinci surgical options is the lovely sounding robotic prostatectomy. Normally you’d have to go downtown and pay a fishnet wearing girl named Candy Box $500 an hour for this service, but now you can get your HMO to cover it.
The daVinci robot is basically an improvement on standard laparoscopic instrumental surgery. The meatbag surgeon is still actually performing the surgery, he can simply see your slimy innards better through high resolution cameras on the slicey bits of the robot arms while he controls them from a whopping 10 feet away. Any further and you’d have to pick out your surgeon based on his ping response time. “One more question, Dr. Hurznbut – how many hops in your operating room?”
Hacked firmwares are starting to emerge – 2600 says “probulator_beta_1.tar” is already floating around the tubes. That and a pitcher of margs and my Friday nights are booked for the next decade..
RobotCentral: Come for the witty articles about our future robot overlords, stay for the specious history lessons, cartoon references and clever names for hookers.
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