Robot Surgery, Thy Name is DaVinci

A company called Intuitive Surgical manufactures and sells the popular robotic surgery assist device known as "DaVinci." It allows its controller (usually a doctor in an adjacent room, or perhaps even across the globe) to make extremely small incisions and precision cuts, nearly eliminating the clumsiness factor of human hands. Though usually used for small-scale procedures such as prostate surgery and hysterectomies, the DaVinci is gaining much broader use, having recently been used in a kidney transplant surgery, and more complex surgeries are on the way.
Another really cool thing about the DaVinci is how it is controlled- 3D monitors provide the off-site doctor with excellent visuals during the surgery, and the computer converts every 5 inches of motion by the DaVinci's joystick controls into only 1 inch of motion by the actual surgical tool, giving it that nice and clean motion that you're always looking in a new surgical robot. According to the guys who built it, "using a robot leads to less tissue trauma, requires fewer surgical assistants, and is less physically taxing for the surgeon." Sounds like a pretty good deal.
A couple of setbacks about this machine, though, are its hefty pricetag of nearly $2 million and the fact that surgeons must acclimate themselves to using the device (luckily Intuitive Surgical has built a 3D simulation program for practice, which can be yours for only a huge amount of money).

I think this article was pretty fascinating because this is the kind of stuff that attracted me to biomedical engineering in the first place. Robot arms + surgery= awesome. This ain't your grandma's college degree plan.

http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/16/robot-surgery-thy-name-is-davinci/