Humanoid Robot Completes Live Surgery for the First Time
N.R. Finch
A UC San Diego team used two humanoid robots — modified from Unitree Robotics' G1 — to perform two surgeries on large primates, marking the first time a human-shaped robot has entered the operating room, rather than a fixed robotic arm.
What exactly happened in this surgery?
According to a paper published in *Nature* on July 8, the team completed two surgeries: the first was a gallbladder removal done by one humanoid robot working alongside a human surgeon; the second was performed by two humanoid robots cooperating on their own.
Both procedures were carried out on large non-human primates — a pre-clinical trial, not yet tested on humans.
This means → it is a "proof of concept" — demonstrating that a humanoid robot can physically handle the precision work of a surgical environment, but real-world human application is still ahead.
What is this robot, and what does it look like?
The surgical robot, nicknamed "Surgie," was modified from the G1 humanoid robot made by China's Unitree Robotics. It stands about 1.5 meters tall and weighs roughly 27 kilograms.
In plain terms = it is not a mechanical arm bolted beside the operating table. It is a small, walking, two-handed humanoid — remotely controlled to perform surgery.
The surgeon is not in the room. Commands travel through a remote-control system that drives the robot's movements.
What advantage does it have over existing surgical robots?
Senior author Michael Yip, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego, noted that current dedicated surgical robots weigh around 800 kg, require a large team to install, and often need the operating room physically remodeled.
Surgie weighs a fraction of that, is mobile and compact, and is far easier to deploy in remote or resource-scarce settings.
Co-author Shanglei Liu, an assistant professor of surgery, said procedures performed by the remotely controlled humanoid were equally precise — "at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the footprint in the OR."
What problems remain unsolved?
Frequent recalibration: the robot had to be recalibrated multiple times during surgery, making procedures far longer than with dedicated systems.
Control latency: there is a delay between the surgeon's command and the robot's action — a core issue the team is actively working to reduce.
This means → it "can do" the work but "does it slowly." Liu pointed out that early dedicated surgical robots faced the same issue — the first robotic laparoscopic surgery took six hours; today it takes about 30 minutes.
What else could it do beyond surgery?
The team envisions Surgie taking on broader roles: because it can walk and perform physical tasks, it could fetch instruments for surgeons or clean the operating room after a procedure.
Yip said one goal is to develop an autonomous surgical assistant — "having humanoid robots work alongside humans as an integrated team to deliver surgical care to those in need."
This reflects an ambition beyond remote-controlled surgery: making the humanoid robot a full-cycle participant in the operating room.
How far away is this from use on humans?
The experiment remains at the pre-clinical proof-of-concept stage. Whether it can advance to human clinical trials is the critical next step.
Whether the latency problem can be effectively solved over longer distances will directly determine the technology's practical viability — for instance, letting a city-based surgeon operate remotely on a patient in a rural area.
In plain terms = the technology has taken the step "from zero to one," but moving from the lab to a real operating room still requires clearing two hurdles: safety validation and engineering optimization.
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