Axsis, a system developed by Cambridge Consultants, is a small, teleoperated robot with two arms tipped with tiny pincers. It’s designed to operate on the eye with greater accuracy than a human.
The device’s articulating pincers are mounted on arms about the size of drinks cans, with extremely light, strong “tendons” made of the same material NASA uses for its solar sails. These pincers can sweep across a 10-millimeter space – the size of the lens of the eye. This is just a demonstrations model; in the final product, the pincers will be replaced with scalpels.
To control the robot, the surgeon sits at a station nearby and uses two 3D haptic joysticks to move the pincers while watching their work on a screen. The image on the screen is enlarged, so the surgeon can make more precise movements, with the pincers operating at a tiny scale not possible with the human hand.
One benefit of the system is that the software disables certain boundaries from being breached. “It won’t let you make the mistake of punching through the back of the lens,” says Chris Wagner, the lead roboticist on the Project.
Source & further reading:https://www.newscientist.com/article/2111445-robot-surgeon-can-slice-eyes-finely-enough-to-remove-cataracts/
Video source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc-73vQ6TWQ
Corina Marinescu
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