Incredible! Now we will have brain surgery"s done by a computer running behind, you guessed it, Linux!
A six-legged robot has been developed by Singapore experts and programmed to drill through the skull during surgery to remove deep-seated brain tumours in sharply reduced operating time.
Engineers at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) came up with the computer-controlled robot known as "Hexapod" in conjunction with surgeons at the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI).
"Currently surgeons have to drill through the bone for up to six hours to remove some skull-based tumours," said Dr Yeo Tseng Tsai of the NNI, in charge of the project.
"Using the robot to perform the drilling will be faster and more precise," he said, with the time cut by nearly 50 per cent.
The speed and precision hinge on the software program written by researchers at NTU"s department of mechanical and production engineering.