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Digital Planet: First-ever unassisted robotic surgery

Factual: Science & Nature

First-ever unassisted robotic surgery

01/02/2022 GMT

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, First-ever unassisted robotic surgery

First-ever unassisted robotic surgery; repairing pig intestines.

First-ever unassisted robotic surgery; repairing pig intestines. Also, Singapore surveillance and lack of transparency and unReal City; merging realities in the theatre.

The first-ever robotic surgery without a human surgeon guiding it has been successfully performed at Johns Hopkins University. The Smart Tissues Autonomous Robot (STAR) completed a keyhole procedure called intestinal anastomosis – the sewing together of two sections of soft bowel - on pigs.  More than a million of these surgeries are performed each year in the US alone and they need to be carried out very precisely and accurately to avoid potentially fatal complications.  Professor Axel Krieger, the mechanical engineer on the team, tells Gareth how this is a major advancement in robotic surgery.

Singapore Surveillance 
Singapore often introduces innovative tech to its citizens, but there is a lack of transparency about the way the data is collected and used. As public tech becomes more affordable it is becoming increasingly available. While the hope is it will solve complex social problems there is no transparency over the algorithms used. This means we don’t know the kind of prejudices, privileges, and assumptions being built in. Without intervention, societal prejudices will continue to be perpetuated. Peter Guest from the Rest of World website has been looking into the dangers of public tech in Singapore and beyond. He tells us why tech companies need to be more transparent.

unReal City
Backstage at the Brighton Dome looks more like the technical suite of a TV studio than a theatre, as technicians watch multiple screens showing the audience and actors in different rooms - and showing a variety of feeds from their VR headsets - because this piece of immersive theatre, unReal City, takes place in both physical and virtual reality. Reporter Claire Jordan has been meeting with the Director of dreamthinkspeak and disabled artists from Access All Areas – the two companies behind the production - which explores if it’s easier or better to connect in the flesh or as an avatar and if links are stronger in reality or could the Metaverse allow us to re-invent ourselves.



The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Bill Thompson.

Studio Manager: Giles Aspen
Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz

Photo: The smart tissue autonomous robot performing laparoscopic anastomosis. Credit to Jiawei Ge//Johns Hopkins University

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