In a landmark experiment published in the journal Nature, surgeons at the University of California San Diego successfully used a remotely controlled humanoid robot to perform gallbladder removals on live pigs — the first operation of its kind.
The robot, nicknamed "Surgie," is a Unitree G1 humanoid — the same model made by leading Chinese robotics company Unitree. At a base price of $13,500 (or around $67,000 with dexterous hands), it's dramatically cheaper than specialized surgical robots like Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci system, which costs $500,000 to several million dollars and weighs 1,800 pounds.
By comparison, the G1 stands just 5 feet tall, weighs 60 pounds, and takes up a fraction of the operating room space.
"It's a fraction of the cost and it takes a fraction of the space in an operating room," said **Dr. Shanglei Liu**, assistant professor of surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "So it's easy to deploy, anywhere from rural areas, to the battlefield, and even to space."
The system works through teleoperation: a surgeon at a control console uses a stereo headset display to see what the robot sees, while a foot pedal engages or disengages hand movements. In the first surgery, a human surgeon stood alongside the robot as an assistant. In the second, two teleoperated robots worked together.
Current limitations include the need for frequent recalibration pauses, constrained range of motion (the G1's arm span is just 450mm vs. 1.6–1.8m for an adult human), and latency issues — current teleoperated systems have delays in the hundreds of milliseconds, ideally below 150ms for surgery.
Still, researchers are pushing toward the long-term vision: an autonomous surgical assistant that could fetch tools, clean operating rooms, and eventually assist in surgery alongside human doctors.
"Remotely operated and autonomous humanoid robots have real potential for amplifying access to critical surgeries to which patients would otherwise not have access," said Michael Yip, professor of electrical and computing engineering at UC San Diego. "This can help address the healthcare crisis not only in the United States, but also worldwide."
The approach could dramatically expand surgical access to small clinics, rural hospitals, military field hospitals, and even future space stations — all without requiring the multi-million-dollar investment of current specialized surgical robotics.
