The Surgery 'Bot!

No, this isn't Sony's replacement for Aibo--it's an actual robot that recently performed a successful operation on a living, breathing human being. At least, that's according to [http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/19/robot-surgeon-performs-worlds-first-unassisted-operation/|a May 19, 2006 post] over at Engadget.com. Here's a snippet:

Even though there were about a million doctors on hand to monitor Dr. Carlo Pappone's robosurgeon doing its detailed work on a 34-year-old Italian patient suffering from atrial fibrillation (heart flutters), we can't help but wonder if a juxtaposed "0" and "1" in the bot's code is all it would take to drive a scalpel somewhere that it isn't supposed to go. Luckily for the pioneering patient, the 50-minute surgery went off without a hitch, most likely due to the fact that the prototype bot has software containing data about some 10,000 real-world operations...

Wow--10,000 operations? I think that's way more than I can learn playing Trauma Center for the DS! ;)