Humanoid robots just performed live organ removal surgery on animals for the first time, according to researchers at UC San Diego.
Surgeons at the University of California San Diego guided two teleoperated humanoid robots — machines built roughly in the human form — through the removal of gallbladders from live pigs. The robots were not autonomous; human surgeons controlled them remotely. The lab setting, not an operating theater, was the venue. The researchers describe this as a medical first for humanoid robot platforms.
The distinction matters because most surgical robots in clinical use today, like the da Vinci system, are purpose-built arms that look nothing like a person. Humanoid platforms are designed to operate in environments built for human hands and bodies, which could make them easier to deploy in existing surgical suites without retooling the room. If humanoid robots can match the precision of dedicated surgical hardware, the case for general-purpose machines in medicine gets meaningfully stronger.
For now, this is a proof of concept on pigs in a controlled lab — a long runway separates a gallbladder extracted under research conditions from routine human surgery, and that gap has swallowed more than a few promising headlines before.