Surgical Robot Slices Eyes Precisely Enough to Remove Cataracts

Cataract surgery is one of the most common surgeries in the world, and the most common complication arises when a surgeon accidentally pierces the back of the lens - a thin membrane only a few millimeters off target. Axsis, a system developed by UK-based company Cambridge Consultants, is a tele-operated robot with two arms equipped with tiny pincers. It's designed to operate on the eye with greater accuracy than a human. These pincers can glide across the size of the lens of the eye, which is a ten-millimeter space. To control the robot, the surgeon sits at a station nearby and uses two 3D haptic joysticks to move the pincers while watching their work on a screen. In the final version of Axsis, the pincers will be replaced with scalpels.