Some brave soul volunteered for a completely robotic dental surgery

[tao]

The robot implanted 3D-printed teeth into a woman without help from dentists.

 

A robot just implanted two 3D-printed teeth into a woman's mouth all on its own. The procedure took place recently in China and the researchers who developed it hope it can help the country's dentist shortage problem, reports the South China Morning Post.

 

Prior to the surgery, the robot was oriented to the patient's head and mouth and researchers then programmed the device with all of the necessary information for it to complete the procedure. That included the angles and depth required for accurate placement of the implants. After testing the programmed movements, the operation was carried out. It took about an hour and though medical staff were present during the procedure, none of them assisted the robot while it worked. Afterwards, the staff determined that the robot had implanted the teeth with high precision.

 

Due to a dentist shortage, South China Morning Post reports that while around 400 million people need dental implants in the country, only about one million are done each year. Further, when people turn to less qualified individuals in order to get needed dental work done, they often end up with additional problems. Robots stand to increase service rates and complete operations with fewer errors.

 

I'm not sure what's scarier -- a human dentist or a robot dentist. But you can check out the video below for some shots of the robot in action.

 

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[lurch234]

IMO this won't solve anything. Robotic surgery has been around since the late '80s and qualified (I hope) surgeons are needed to use these machines.

We can see six people around the "dental" robot and someone had to insert the drill bit. And what about x-rays? The conception and fabrication of the implants?

The robot can't do these things. This looks more like showing off. Hey! We invented a robot that can drill holes This reminds me of China's self driving bus they showcased two years ago.

Haven't heard anything new on that subject, have we? I'm not discrediting the Chinese in any way here. Remember  Elon Musk's vacuum tube train he talked about 4 years ago!

This is all a nice proof of concept but not really feasible in cold hard reality.

[tao]

China Built a Self-Driving... Something

 

The vehicle is a cross between a train and a bus, and it will soon travel the streets of Zhuzhou.

 

Self-driving cars are either already here or perpetually a few years away, depending on who you ask. Companies like Tesla and Uber are working to build self-driving trucks to ferry cargo across the country. For any given mode of transportation, someone is trying to make it autonomous.

 

But for one Chinese company, it's not enough to make self-driving versions of the vehicles that already exist. Rail transit company CRRC invented a brand new type of vehicle and then made it self-driving.

 

The Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit (ART) is some kind of cross between a train and a bus or tram. The ART runs on roads like a bus, but only on designated paths like a tram. It's modular like a train, and carriages can be added or removed to accommodate different numbers of people. Each carriage can fit about 100 passengers.

 

And of course, the whole thing can run without a driver, although at least for now the ART comes with a stand-in driver for safety. The train-bus hybrid follows a pair of white lines painted on the street and contains a suite of sensors for avoiding obstacles.

 

The ART is also completely electric, and can get 15 miles on a 10 minute charge. The goal of the project is to create affordable mass transit for cities without enough money to build subways or tram tracks. Instead, the ART costs about as much as a bus, but the hybrid transit vehicle is more reliable and can fit many more people.

 

The first ART line is currently under construction in the city of Zhuzhou and is expected to become operational sometime in 2018. Now we just have to figure out what to call it.

 

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