Pentagon puts faith in robot surgeons
March 29, 2005
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The Pentagon is awarding $US12 million ($15.57 million) in grants to develop an unmanned "trauma pod" designed to use robots to perform full scalpel-and-stitch surgeries on wounded soldiers in battlefield conditions.
The researchers who pitched the US Defence Department on the idea have prepared a futuristic "concept video" that seems straight out of a fantasy game, showing with full colour and sound effects the notion that robots in unmanned vehicles can operate on soldiers under enemy fire and then evacuate them.
"The main challenge is how can we get high-quality medical care onto the battlefield as close to the action and as close to the soldiers as possible," said John Bashkin, head of business development at SRI International, a nonprofit laboratory that often handles Defence Department research.
"Right now, the resources are pretty limited to what a medic can carry with him."
SRI researchers say the project remains at least a decade away from appearing on any battlefields. Surgeons will need to manipulate the robot in real time, using technology that prevents any delays between their commands and the robot's actions. The "trauma pod" has to be connected wirelessly without giving away its position to the enemy, and it has to be nimble and hardy enough to perform under fire.
Some of the technology is already being put to use in hospitals and the project's goal is modest - researchers hope to show that a surgeon, operating the robot remotely, can stitch together two blood vessels of a pig.
Even with this modest initial goal, the obstacles are daunting, not least getting the project funded as Congress debates the costs of the army's latest plan to transform itself into a high-tech force. Army officials said on Saturday that the first phase of a program, called Future Combat Systems, could run to $US145 billion.
Paul Boyce, a US Army spokesman, said the "technological bridge to the future" would equip 15 brigades of roughly 3000 soldiers - or about one-third of the force the army plans to field - over a 20-year span.
That price tag, larger than past estimates publicly disclosed by the army, does not include a projected $US25 billion for the communications network needed to connect the future forces. Nor does it fully account for plans to provide Future Combat weapons and technologies to forces beyond those first 15 brigades.
Now some of the military's advocates in Congress are asking how to pay the bill.
The army sees Future Combat as a seamless web of 18 different sets of networked weapons and military robots.
The program is at the heart of the campaign by the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to transform the army into a faster, lighter force in which stripped-down tanks could be put on a transport plane and flown into battle, and information systems could protect soldiers of the future.
