Sony Develops Microsurgery Assistance Robot

May 9, 2023, Tokyo, Japan

Sony Group Corporation (Sony) today announced the development of a microsurgery assistance robot capable of automatic surgical instrument exchange and precision control. The prototype will be unveiled at the Sony booth during the 2024 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2024), which opens in Yokohama on May 13.

Factors such as a shrinking workforce caused by an aging society have resulted in a serious shortage of medical practitioners, who face an increased workload in the medical field. Against this backdrop, in the field of surgery where high skill levels are required, the use of surgical robots that assist with precision operations is expected to reduce surgeon workloads and help promote the spread of advanced medical services.

The prototype was developed by Sony’s R&D team for technology development to assist in microsurgical procedures for use in conjunction with a microscope, etc., to work on extremely small tissues, such as veins and nerves. The movements of the surgeons’ hands and fingers captured with a highly sensitive control device are replicated on a small surgical instrument that operates smoothly, akin to the movement of the human wrist. Practical challenges with conventional surgical assistant robots include interruptions and delays in surgery due to manually exchanging surgical instruments, but the R&D team has developed a system that allows for the automatic exchange of these parts through miniaturizing them. In so doing, the R&D team has been seeking the possibility to allow the robot to assist in a wide variety of surgical procedures, enabling more medical practitioners to perform microsurgeries that require extremely delicate operations in the future.

In February 2024, an experiment was conducted by Aichi Medical University, where surgeons and other medical practitioners that do not specialize in microsurgical procedures used the prototype and successfully created an anastomosis in animal blood vessels (diameter of approximately 0.6 mm). This is the world’s first case of microvascular anastomosis achieved using a surgical assistance robot with an automatic instrument exchange function*.

*According to Sony research, as of May 9, 2024.

Going forward, Sony plans to work with university medical departments and medical institutions to further develop and verify the effectiveness of robotic surgical assistance technology. Continuing to move forward with R&D, the company aims to help resolve issues in the medical domain and contribute to the advancement of medicine by providing robotic technologies.

A demonstration video of this technology can be viewed on YouTube.