The robotic surgeon could soon be in, performing solo — much to the relief of a short-staffed U.S. medical community.

In recent months, a new wave of more autonomous robots fueled by artificial intelligence (AI) have emerged with the capability of performing surgery on their own, without the assistance of humans, and help ease a major shortage of surgeons in the U.S.

Late last year, a robot trained solely by observing seasoned surgeons on video, successfully replicated complex surgical procedures with the skill of human doctors, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and Stanford University.

Robots are learning to manipulate needles, tie knots and suture wounds on their own. And they are correcting small mistakes, such as picking up a dropped needle. Scientists have now moved to the next stage of combining all the different skills in full surgeries performed on animal cadavers.

“It’s really magical to have this model and all we do is feed it camera input and it can predict the robotic movements needed for surgery,” Axel Krieger, an assistant professor in JHU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and senior author, said in a statement. “We believe this marks a significant step forward toward a new frontier in medical robotics.”

The robots used by Krieger and his colleagues were made from research kits supplied by medical technology firm Intuitive.

“In our work, we’re not trying to replace the surgeon. We just want to make things easier for the surgeon,” Krieger said. “Imagine, do you want a tired surgeon, where you’re the last patient of the day, and the surgeon is super-exhausted? Or do you want a robot that is doing a part of that surgery and really helping out the surgeon?”

At Stanford University, in the heart of Silicon Valley, researchers are using the machine learning architecture that powers ChatGPT with imitation learning to train a da Vinci Surgical System robot in skills comparable to human surgeons. But in this case, the model speaks “robot” using kinematics, a language that converts the angles of robotic motion into mathematical expressions instead of ChatGPT’s use of words and text.

Breakthroughs seemingly are coming monthly, in addition to robot surgeons. As robotics’ grips and foundational knowledge improve they are performing procedures unimaginable just a few years ago on:

– Brain surgery: A French startup named Robeauté has just raised about $29 million to develop a truly groundbreaking neurosurgical microrobot. Imagine a device no bigger than a grain of rice that can carefully navigate the complex and delicate pathways of the brain. This little robot could change the way doctors treat brain tumors and other neurological conditions.

– Knee replacement: For the first time, advanced robotic technology assisted doctors in Canada on a knee procedure that requires extreme precision.

– Retina surgery: Researchers at the University of Utah’s John A. Moran Eye Center and the John and Marcia Price College of Engineering meanwhile have collaborated to create a highly advanced robotic surgery device that gives surgeons “superhuman hands” to perform retinal surgery.

Indeed, the medical community has grown increasingly comfortable in working with non-humans. For decades, machines have been helping doctors perform gallbladder removals, hysterectomies, hernia repairs, prostate surgeries and more. In 2020, the U.S. reported about 876,000 robot-assisted surgeries.

The latest medical breakthroughs via AI and robotics come nearly four decades after the PUMA 560 became the first robot to assist in the operating room, helping with a brain biopsy in 1985.

If there are any obstacles to a robot cutting open a person and performing surgery, it may come long before the actual procedure. For now, robots are being trained on videotape that are not actual surgeries. To learn from videotapes of real surgeries, the bots and medical personnel will need to gain permission from patients to have their surgical videos used.