DARPA’s Battlefield Robot Medic to Deploy in 2009

Posted on August 8, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

This year is the 50th anniversary of DARPA, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon research arm who turns science fiction fantasy into military reality. DARPA conducts high-risk military research and in the process develops amazing medical technology. To kick things off right at their 3-day DARPA tech conference (or official site here) they announced the upcoming deployment of the remote battlefield medic/surgeon Trauma Pod robotic system by 2009! Surgical robotics was initially conceived by DARPA as remote battlefront or space surgical robots and this technology is now widely available in the DaVinci surgical robots.

As Popular Mechanics reported from the Conference: (skip to the end for links to videos)

the first portable, self-contained surgical robot will be deployed in the next two years. Brett Giroir, director of the research agency’s Defense Sciences Office also announced that the system, called Trauma Pod, has successfully “treated” a mannequin during a test, with no complications.

A single human will operate the robot remotely during surgery, but Trauma Pod will be able to perform a number of functions, such as fluid administration and surgical assistance, autonomously. The goal is to stabilize injured soldiers as quickly as possible, and previous Trauma Pod designs have included related systems that evacuate the patient. Giroir said that a prototype will be delivered to troops within two years.

Details of the System and its Use:

According to DSO Director Brett Giroir, the goal of the Trauma Pod is to conduct “emergency control surgery.” That means diagnosing and treating major trauma, focusing on airway management, head wounds and, as Giroir put it, “controlling uncontrollable bleeding.”

And while a surgeon will be controlling some of the Pod’s functions, such as the more invasive procedures, the system relies heavily on autonomous control. The robots in the Pod would insert breathing tubes and IVs, but the surgeon would direct the scalpel. Even during remote operation, auto-targeting systems will assist the surgeon, completing or fine-turning certain actions. “It’s not doing surgery the way a person is,” Giroir said. Instead of an exercise in advanced telepresence, the Trauma Pod is a synthesis of human judgement and robotic precision. Much of the surgeon’s input will be to tell the robots not to do something, such as inserting a breathing tube. Many of the systems are still up in the air, but Giroir expects the Pod to rely on CT scans for diagnosing trauma, and various surgical instruments that, as depicted in the video, the robots will literally grab out of a rack. It might incorporate technology from other programs, such as a device that triggers coagulation in a severed artery through high-intensity focused ultrasound.

Getting the patient off the battlefield and into a hospital is another matter. While the Pod is supposed to eventually meet certain size and weight restrictions, there are no plans yet to incorporate specific vehicles. Giroir does believe it will be compact enough to fit in the back of a Stryker vehicle, for example, and the experimental model that will be delivered in two years might still need to be trimmed down. The Trauma Pod is expected to be used by the Army initially, with possible, full-production deployment happening between 2011 and 2013. That’s a very rough estimate from Giroir, and much of the timing will depend on how quickly the system can be miniaturized, and whether it actually works.

Giroir was also excited about the Pod’s potential civilian use, for when trauma centers are often too far away to save a patient’s life. Local hospitals could stock a single Trauma Pod, and have a surgeon thousands of miles away assist in stabilizing the patient.

They say there are no video or photos available but here at docinthemachine I posted a report and videos of the systems concept and prototypes back last year. You see the post and all the clips at Awesome Army Videos-Terminator 2025 Battlefield Surgery Built NOW!

For Those Who Want More DARPA Hi Tech Medical Information: I have prevously written about DARPA and the medical offshoots of its research . You can read about why DARPA can take the big risks in medical development private industry won’t in Risky Business:Why DARPA Does What Medical Industry Won’t. Be sure to read Army Axing High-Tech Soldier of Tomorrow- MedTech Losses Predicted for all ofthemedicalbenefits of the Soldier of Tomorrow “Land Warrior” Program. You can read about the history and future projects planned by DARPA in 2007 in DARPA Releases Strategic Plan 2007 and about it’s amazing array of projects in DARPA 2007 Pt2: Major Achievements, Future Plans, & Medical Benefits (including Newton’s Laws for Biology, Prosthetics, Biological Warfare Defense, and Real-Time Accurate Language Translation).

Come back tomorrow for my next post reviewing the other robots they showcased…

Docinthemachine Guest Blogging at Medgadget!

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

I am very excited to begin guest blogging over at Medgadget! I am sure many of you are familiar with the site. Medgadget is a hugely popular site that reviews new medical devices. My first post is Bionic Implants Available Today: Docinthemachine Guest Post and reviews the state of the art of current human bionics; technology and ethics.

Medgadget is edited by Michael Ostrovsky, M.D. & Nicholas Genes, M.D., Ph.D. (of blogborygmi and grand rounds fame) & Timothy Odell along with webmaster Gene Ostrovsky. After admiring their work from when I began blogging, I was honored to be one of their finalists for best medical technology blog 2006. Then the real suprise cam when I received an email from Nich & Michael asking if I would consider guest blogging on medgagdet as a regular feature.

They wrote:

I was also talking this over with my colleagues at Medgadget.com, we’re grateful for your comments to the site and were wondering if you’d like to formalize your relationship, which is to say, write for Medgadget. As we talked about it, you could post about your research, other technology that catches your eye, your expectations for future development.

Since I have ideas galore and love their site I quickly wrote back – YES!

Thank you so much for the kind words and your support. As far as medgadget, I know the site well and greatly respect and enjoy it. I am honored by your request.

After we got this arranged I found out Nick and Gene were both invited to the J&J Blogging Summiit in NYC along with me. We had a great discussion and exchange of ideas and made arrangements for me to start guest blogging.

Gene, myself, and Nick at the Medical Blogging Dinner

I hope you will all go check out my gest blogging. Please send comments to me here or the medgadget people over on their site and let us know if you enjoy my visit over there. I plan on posting on their site very other week or so.

Bionic Friday Posts

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

For your enjoyment today – a collection of forward thinking docinthemachine posts about robotics and bionic humans. Take a minute today to push your mind a decade into the future. Ponder with me roboic amoeba rovers inthe body, bionic retinal implants, and humanoid androids.

Finish the day with a post on the singularity and mind transfer into a computer.

What makes a human human? While you may think you know, the distinction is blurring as a result of medical technology advances.

Robotic Amoeba Created: Teens Fear Bionic Blob

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Dennis Hong, of Virginia Tech College of Engineering is designing a Whole Skin Locomotion (WSL) mechanism for robots to work on much the same principle as the pseudopod — or cytoplasmic “foot” — of the amoeba. With its elongated cylindrical shape and expanding and contracting actuating rings, the WSL can turn itself inside out in a single continuous motion, mimicking the motion of the cytoplasmic tube an amoeba generates for propulsion.

The inventor says:

“Our preliminary experiments show that a robot using the WSL mechanism can easily squeeze between obstacles or under a collapsed ceiling,” Hong said. The mechanism, which can use all of its contact surfaces for traction, can even squeeze through holes with diameters much smaller than its normal width.

“This unique mobility makes WSL the ideal locomotion method for search-and-rescue robots that need to travel over or under rubble,” said Hong, who hopes his research will help promote the concept of bio-inspiration in robot design. “The mechanism also has the potential for use in medical applications — such as robotic endoscopes, for example, where a robot must maneuver in tight spaces.”

Of course my mind sees yet another version of an impnatable robot for medical diagnosis and treatment in the evolving realm of what I call “Future Vision”: the coming radical transformation of medicine.

Better Retinal Implants for Blindness Cure Coming

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

I previously wrote about retinal implants that might cure blindness. This idea is yet another in the line of machine-human implants that will first replace natural abilities – aqnd ultimately augment human abilities. Look here for a video fest and link fest of bionic human implants in development.

Researchers now claim to have developed another retinal implant to cure blindness now with four times the resolution of previous implantable chips

Scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) announced their plans to test an improved retinal implant in blind patients. The new implant, which scientists hope will improve patients’ vision even more, has four times the resolution of the previous version.

Details of the chip and it’s challenges:

The device, developed by Mark Humayun and colleagues at USC, consists of a tiny chip dotted with hair-thin electrodes. When implanted in the retina, the electrodes transmit electrical signals from the chip to neural cells in the eye, which then send the message to the brain. A wireless camera mounted on glasses and a video processing unit worn on the belt capture and process visual information from the wearer’s surroundings and wirelessly transmit those signals to the chip.

The new version of the implant… has quadrupled the number of electrodes–from 16 to 60.l. The researchers recently received permission from the Food and Drug Administration to start human tests.

It is just a matter of time until night vision and superhuman quality vision chips will be available for elective implantation. Would you get one?

If You Transfer Your Mind to Robot Which One of You is “You”?

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Kurzweil and others have been forecasting the coming of the technological singularity for some time. The term, coined by Vernor Vinge, describes the creation of “humans 2.0″ when man and machine become connected in the creation of a new type of being. For more background information on this concept and predictions for it s coming in the future read here. As Vinge writes:

The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater-than-human intelligence.

Potential ways this may happen

Computers that are “awake” and superhumanly intelligent.

Large computer networks become superhumanly intelligent entities.

Computer/human interfaces blur distinction between man and machine.

Biological science may provide means to improve natural human intellect.

Betterhumans ponders a technological question which really delves into a metaphysical question of what makes a human human and where is the seat of the soul. If you download increasing amounts of your memory and consciousness into a machine at what point does it become human and “you”

(If) we have the technology to constantly back up our brains onto a computer through some wireless connection so that at any one time the computer has a snapshot of your brain in its current state. Now lets say that you get in an accident and 50% of your brain is damaged, so they take that backup and use it to replace 50% of your brain. Would you still consider yourself to be you and not some copy? what about 40% or 20%? What about 5%? Are you still you?

If you get in an accident and need 95% of your brain replaced and you use the backup image of your brain, are you still the original? Lets say that you get in an accident and are killed and lose 100% of your brain. But doctors take the image of your brain and put it into a new body that is exactly like your old body with all your memories right up to and including the accident which caused your death, are you still you? What if they replaced your brain while you were still healthy?

Consider now a future technology which allows for the slow conversion of your brain from flesh and blood to hardware. It’s a slow process taking up to 3 years, no one really knows when the process is entirely finished. You notice no difference in your daily life as the process occurs but at some point in the future your brain goes from being 100% natural to being 100% artificial. Are you still you? Are you still the original? You obviously feel like the original but your brain is no longer original it’s just a pattern of your old brain running on hardware.

Generally speaking a person would be far more accepting of the slow replacement that isn’t noticeable over a complete replacement at one time but the two processes give the exact same result. It’s a pattern of your flesh and blood brain in hardware. So why is it that people have such a difficult time with the idea of mind uploading? It seems like the issue in the end is that people want a sense of being original. That is to say when you go to sleep and then wake up in the morning you believe that you are the same person that went to sleep in the same bed last night, but what if you aren’t? Would it really make any difference as long as you thought that you were the original?

Image that when you die you wake up in a new body right after you die and you say, oh shit I just died. But you are on a bed in some room in a building with a new body but all your memories including every memory up until the moment of death are in your mind and you start thinking about how much it sucked to die but how happy you are that you woke up in this bed and are alive and well. How is that any different than the idea of a soul being transfered at the moment of death from one body to another? Your soul if there is such as thing is nothing more than the sum total of who you are so it would be essentially the same thing? Your are just transferring the essence of yourself.

If you have brain damage you are no longer yourself, it’s your mind not your body that makes up the essence of who you are, so why fight mind uploading when it makes so much sense?

The Most Life-Like Android Ever Made: Video

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Meet Jules, the most life-like robot you have ever seen. The robot is programmed with the most sophisticated artificial intelligence features. It can recognize babies vs. adults, its creator and people he has ‘met’.

video of “intelligent” android

Docinthemachine Guest Blogging on Lifeboat Foundation Blog

Posted on March 15, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

I am honored and excited to have been invited to guest blog on the Lifeboat Foundation Blog. My first post is on the new DARPA 2007 focus plan and its relation to medical technology.

For those unfamiliar with them, their mission statements sums it up:

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards a technological singularity.

Lifeboat Foundation is pursuing a variety of options, including helping to accelerate the development of technologies to defend humanity, including new methods to combat viruses (such as RNA interference and new vaccine methods), effective nanotechnological defensive strategies, and even self-sustaining space colonies in case the other defensive strategies fail.

We believe that, in some situations, it might be feasible to relinquish technological capacity in the public interest (for example, we are against the U.S. government posting the recipe for the 1918 flu virus on the internet). We have some of the best minds on the planet working on programs to enable our survival.

They have an impressive Scientific Advisory Board including a large helping of professors and Nobel Laureats (and me). You can read more about them here.

Is Technology Good, Evil, or Neutral?

Posted on March 14, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Is the TechDoc Evil?

Technology is neither good nor evil, it’s the use that crosses the moral boundaries.

As technology is leaping forward an unprecedented pace, this old question is more pressing now than ever. (If you’re short on time skip to the last paragraph for my conclusions)

A review of this debate can be found here including this question:

As we have seen, technology can be neutral, and … “can act as a catalyst to engender trust” … It is also clear that in many situations, technology is certainly not neutral; technology can marginalize people, incite divisiveness, block knowledge flow… Is technology a neutral “tool” that is designed to carry out the will of the user?

Ars technica in a post ipods at war related this debate to the Myth of Icarus. Unfortunately, their conclusion is so far off the mark. They claim we are victims of technology that we have become addicted to. War ravages as the American Army is shaped by video games and movies to kill. Sorry, folks, the Ozzy Osbourne made me kill myself lawsuit just didn’t hold up.

I really like the inference they make that the Icarus myth is really a story about technology; “when father Daedalus creates the artificial wings for himself and his son, he makes it possible for them to experience something new, but the technology also makes it easy for Icarus to destroy himself.”

ICtforpeace goes on to argue that technology is not morally neutral (and the military is inherently evil).

A Walther PPK would make, I am sure, a pretty good paper-weight, but it was made for a specific purpose and it is rather good when used for its intended purpose, and less elegant when used for others.

They mistakenly suggest

many technologies can be used for both good and bad purposes. But usually neutrality is taken to have a stronger meaning, such as that technologies are equally easy to use for different purposes, which is not helpful when comparing compact disks and cruise missiles.

Philosophical theories on this point can be found on this webpage

Those who believe that technology is neutral argue that “guns don’t kill people, people do”, or that a knife can be used to “cook, kill, or cure.” Those who believe the opposite counter with evidence that technology cannot be evaluated in a vacuum and that there are traits common to all technological developments: (1) technological objects are unique; they are designed to function in a particular and limited way, and (2) technological objects are intertwined with their environment; they interact in unique ways with the rest of reality.

More philosophical musings on the neutrality question can be found here.

I believe in technological neutrality. While it seems that in some scenarios (such as weapons) technology is clearly more likely to be used in one way rather than another, it is just that particular application of the technology that sets off our reaction. There is no better example than the work of DARPA which I have written about. Nuclear technology did not just lead to the bomb it also can be used for medicine and energy. The knowledge of the technology is not that is evil.

While many lament the development of expensive military technology I see the beneficial medical applications inherent in these projects. While one person might see evil and death I can see good and life come from the exact same technologies. Read about the medical uses of military technology here, here, and here.

As my friend Dr. Rick Satava (surgeon, colonel, and Program Manager at DARPA) said:

Technology is Neutral – it is neither good or evil

It is up to us to breathe the moral and ethical life into these technologies

And then apply them with empathy and compassion for each and every patient

Grand Rounds Vol. 3.25 is Up!

Posted on March 13, 2007 by Steven F. Palter, MD

Grand Rounds 3.25 is up over at Scienceroll. A gret blog I have mentioned before it is run by Bertalan Meskó, a Hungarian Medical Student wit a passion for genetics. Definitely worth checking out there are about 60 posts but excellently organized in categories to make the reading clear and quick. A nice variety.

I am honored that he chose two submissions from docinthemachine (one I submitted and one submitted by somemone else!). There are links to my posts on :

docinthemachine’s first podcast on the coming technological revolution in surgery (in a new web 2.0 section of grand rounds )and also on new regulations to spread information and increase post marketing surveillance of drugs from the FDA