Understanding the environment and looking ahead: These are the skills that Lukas Bernhard and Prof. Dirk Wilhelm aim to instill in their team of robots, which will offer assistance to surgical teams in the future. Both the robot SASHA-OR and AURORA are already functioning on a prototypical level. The surgical robots in the MITI-OP lab handle instruments and surgical materials, passing them to the surgeons. "So far, such robots still work quite slowly and only on demand," says engineer Bernhard, “Therefore we are currently working on more contextual understanding and proactive action”. For this, the robot needs to know the steps involved in an operation and, even before sutures are needed, fetch them from the sterile supply and hand them over. Surgeon Dirk Wilhelm sees this technological advancement as timely: "The shortage of skilled personnel is noticeable," says the doctor, who hopes for assisting support from AI-based technology.
The silent operating room: The prerequisite is an intelligent operating room
Currently, more than 20 researchers at MITI are working, among other things, to make assisting technology increasingly intelligent. While the working group founded by Prof. Hubertus Feußner and Prof. Wilhelm almost 25 years ago primarily focused on instruments for diagnosing and operating patients, today it is no longer "only" about minimally invasive laparoscopy and surgical robotics for clinical practice but also more and more about artificial intelligence, i.e., learning machines.
Already today, the sterile surgical robot SASHA-OR, for example, can predict the next required surgical instrument with an accuracy of 70 percent. This allows the robot to grasp and pass the instrument before it is needed, making the entire surgery process much smoother. In situations where prediction fails, voice control must step in. However, the goal is, as in a well-functioning surgical team, a silent operating room. Ideally, it remains silent even when technology is in use. "Currently, operating rooms in many hospitals are often not fully utilized due to a lack of personnel, so intelligent assistant robots will play an increasingly significant role in the future," says Bernhard, who is responsible for the operational management at MITI. Also helpful in medical practice is telemedicine, where robotics can provide support. The foundation for the use of telemedicine has already been laid in the ProteCT project. Now, in the research project 6G-life, the goal is to find out how delays in transmission paths can be further shortened. For example, doctors from a medical competence center can be asked to remotely conduct diagnostic examinations for a patient if their primary care physicians do not have suitable devices or lack specific knowledge.