A robot under development at Nottingham Trent University, U.K., promises greater precision in surgeries to correct scoliosis and other spinal conditions. Scoliobot uses two universal robot UR5 cobot arms Scoliobot is designed to perform spinal surgery with greater accuracy than today’s procedures. Source: Nottingham Trent Universityto drill holes in vertebrae in which pedicle screws are attached to deformity rod reducers designed to realign the spine.

A datum robot is secured to and moves with a vertebra in concert with the patient’s movement and transmits motion data to a computer. A tooling robotic arm adjusts the system’s position according to a pre-programmed path to support precision drilling, the accuracy of which has been documented at 0.1 mm. The robotic arms operate within an augmented reality environment to provide visual feedback that illustrates the depth of each hole as it is drilled.

Scoliobot hasn’t been tested on actual patients, but is about to be tested on 3D patient data-based spinal models.