The system responds to voice commands, learns from feedback, and can understand and navigate complex surgeries in unpredictable scenarios, moving beyond pre-programmed tasks.

While tested on pig organs and ex vivo models, the robot has not yet been used on live patients, with future challenges including miniaturization, handling bleeding, and organ movement.

Experts emphasize that further testing is necessary to address real-world variables like tissue variability, patient movement, and bleeding before clinical application.

Current tests on pig organs do not account for live tissue challenges, indicating that more research and safety assessments are needed.

Medical professionals highlight the importance of rigorous testing, training, and ensuring patient safety through human trials before autonomous robots are widely adopted.

Dr. Noha Yassin and others stress that autonomous surgical systems must undergo thorough clinical trials to verify safety and efficacy.

Industry experts see this development as a milestone towards surgical autonomy, with the potential to allow surgeons to oversee multiple procedures simultaneously.

The global surgical robotics market is nearing $10 billion annually, with millions of procedures performed in 2024, reflecting rapid growth and interest in this technology.

The development aligns with NHS plans to increase robotic surgery use, aiming for nine in ten keyhole surgeries to be robot-assisted within the next decade.

The AI system powering SRT-H uses a hierarchical framework, with one layer analyzing endoscopic video and issuing instructions, and another translating these into precise 3D movements.

This layered approach enables the robot to perform complex tasks, such as identifying structures and executing surgical steps, with resilience to disruptions like tissue shifts.

A new autonomous surgical robot, the Surgical Robot Transformer-Hierarchical (SRT-H), has demonstrated significant progress by performing complex procedures with the precision and adaptability of a skilled human surgeon.