Touchy Feely Robot Promises to be Gentle (and Check for Cancer)S
This won't hurt a bit! Researchers have developed a prototype
robot that, through key-hole surgery, can detect cancer tumors
in half the time, with less tissue damage, and with 40 percent
more accuracy than clumsy humans.  Doctors traditionally use MRI
and CT scans, and because tumors tend to be stiffer than
surrounding tissue, also need to pretty much poke around.
That's where the robots—developed by the University of Western
Ontario and Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advanced Robotics
(CSTAR)—come in. In tests using cow livers to represent human
tissue, the robots' tactile sensors reduced applied force by 35
percent, and systematic tissue mapping made them more accurate.
Sounds intriguing, but let's hope they don't license the tech to
the TSA for bots with rubber gloves...[TG Daily and TechRadar]