A NEW TELEROBOTIC APPLICATION - REMOTE LAPAROSCOPIC SURGERY USING SATELLITES AND OPTICAL-FIBER NETWORKS FOR DATA EXCHANGE

This article describes the significance in human, scientific and techn ical terns of the first experiment in telerobotic surgery carried out between the NASA Jet propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, an d the Telerobotics Laboratory of the Politecnico di Milano on 7 July 1 993. An Italian robot in the Telerobotics Laboratory was remotely cont rolled by an Italian surgeon in the United States. The robot's task wa s to perform a surgical operation on a model containing a pig's organs , involving execution of a biopsy, aspiration of organic material, and two incisions in preparation of laparoscopy. Transmission was effecte d by means of a double satellite link with three transceiver stations: one in Italy, one close to New York, and one in Pasadena, and two geo stationary satellites, the first over the Atlantic and the second over the United States. The route length of the signals was 150,000 km in each direction, and the two centers are 10,000 km apart.