Breakthrough in Surgical Robotics: AI-Powered DaVinci Robot Successfully Performs Surgery on Pig Organs

In a groundbreaking experiment, researchers at Johns Hopkins University successfully trained a ChatGPT-like AI to perform gallbladder-removal surgery using a DaVinci surgical robot. The AI, named SRT-H, demonstrated 100% success rate in performing the procedure on pig cadaver samples, achieving precision comparable to expert human surgeons.
The system relies on two transformer models: a high-level policy module for task planning and a low-level module to execute specific robotic arm movements. Trained on over 17 hours of video and kinematics data, SRT-H learned to adapt to anatomical variations and recover from minor errors. It also accepted natural language feedback, mimicking how a mentor surgeon guides a trainee.
Despite its success, SRT-H faces challenges in scaling to live animals and humans due to restricted access to kinematics data from Intuitive Surgical, the company behind the DaVinci robot. Intuitive Surgical fears competitors could reverse-engineer their technology, but researchers propose alternative solutions, such as using motion-tracking sensors on manual surgical tools.
This advancement marks a significant step toward autonomous surgical robots capable of performing a wide range of procedures with minimal human oversight.

Published: 7/21/2025