This week, Google’s Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) and Ethicon, a Johnson & Johnson medical device company, announced the formation of a startup called Verb. What is Verb? Something about medical robotics, I guess:
“In the coming years, Verb aims to develop a comprehensive surgical solutions platform that will incorporate leading-edge robotic capabilities and best-in-class medical device technology for operating room professionals.”
Sounds good to me! But seriously, that’s not much to go on, so let’s see what we can piece together from the press releases put out from the various companies involved.
The picture at the top of this article almost definitely isn’t Verb’s new surgical robot. It’s Taurus, from SRI Robotics, which (according to a press release) “is licensing next-generation robotics technology to Verb Surgical that we believe will impact both the open and minimally invasive surgery markets and ultimately make the benefits of robotic surgery accessible to more patients around the world.”
While Taurus, originally designed as a bomb-disposal robot, is very much not a surgical robot in its current implementation, it represents several technologies that are very valuable in a surgical context: highly dexterous small manipulators and an advanced teleoperation system with haptic feedback.
The SRI press release also says that “Verb Surgical is developing a new robotic surgery platform that will integrate technologies such as advanced imaging, data analysis, and machine learning to enable greater efficiency and improved outcomes across a wide range of surgical procedures,” which is interesting because of the reference to machine learning. Machine learning can be applied to all sorts of things, of course, but existing commercial surgical robots have mostly steered far away from any kind of learning behaviors or anything that is in the least bit autonomous. If the technology can be made reliable enough, it would be an enormous advance if surgical robots could collaboratively lend their intelligence to human-controlled surgery.
This is true for the same reason that autonomous cars are better drivers than humans are: they have the potential to digest enormous amounts of data (including types that humans can’t directly access) and rapidly make highly informed decisions. We’re not suggesting that purely robotic surgeons are the way to go anytime soon, but as intelligent tools, they could be invaluable.
Meanwhile, here’s what Johnson & Johnson’s press release has to say:
“We believe Verb Surgical has the potential to change the future of surgery, not just robotic surgery,” said Gary Pruden, Worldwide Chairman, Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices. “The team has already made meaningful progress on the robotics platform, which is being developed for application across a host of surgical specialties.” Ethicon, which has deep expertise in minimally invasive surgery and advanced instrumentation, is developing surgical instruments for Verb Surgical’s new robotics-assisted platform. In the coming years, Verb Surgical aims to develop a comprehensive surgical solutions platform that will incorporate leading-edge robotic capabilities and best-in-class medical device technology for operating room professionals.
Along with Taurus, SRI also has been developing more traditional surgical robots, which could also be part of Verb’s new robotics platform. The M7 telerobotic surgical system is designed to do all kinds of crazy things, providing auditory, visual, and tactile sensation, tremor compensation, and even motion compensation for operating in a moving vehicle (!). Over the last decade, the M7 has been demonstrated in an underwater laboratory and in microgravity. The most recent look at the system that I can find is this very brief overview from SRI’s 2015 open house:
Perhaps we’re focusing too much on SRI here, but we know about at least some of their robotics technology, which is more than we know about most of the rest of these guys. And this is all speculation on our part, mind you: we don’t have much information at all on exactly what Verb is going to be doing. There are about a hundred people working for Verb in Mountain View, Calif., doing…stuff. And there are likely to be even more, soon, continuing to do…stuff. Hopefully, at some point not too terribly long from now we’ll find out what all the stuff is, and until then, we’ll just have to keep on speculating.
[ Verb Surgical ]
Evan Ackerman is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes.
