Surgical Robots to Provide Open-Source Platform for Medical Robotics Research

In a basement on the University of Washington campus perch seven identical robots. Named Raven, each has two winglike arms that end in tiny claws designed to perform surgery on a simulated patient.

After a round of final tests, five of the systems will be shipped to medical robotics researchers at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles. The other two systems will remain at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and UW.

“With everyone working on the same, open-source platform we can more easily share new developments and innovations,” said UW electrical engineering professor Blake Hannaford...