Surgeons Remotely Steer Humanoid Robots in First-of-Its-Kind Animal Surgery

In a medical first, humanoid robots performed gallbladder removal surgery on live pigs — but these weren’t autonomous machines acting alone. Surgeons controlled every move from a distance, marking a new milestone in human-robot collaboration. The two minimally invasive procedures were part of a preclinical trial published in Nature, and the results could eventually reshape how remote surgery is delivered.

The idea is straightforward: put a nimble, affordable humanoid robot in a small rural clinic or even a battlefield tent, and let a specialist hundreds of miles away operate it in real time. “It’s a fraction of the cost and takes a fraction of the space in an operating room,” said Dr. Shanglei Liu, assistant professor of surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “So it’s easy to deploy anywhere — rural areas, the battlefield, even space.”

The robot used in the experiment was a Unitree G1, a Chinese-made humanoid that stands five feet tall and weighs just 60 pounds. The base model starts at $13,500, though adding dexterous hands pushes the price above $67,000. Compare that to specialized surgical systems like the da Vinci, which can cost anywhere from half a million to several million dollars and weigh 1,800 pounds. For smaller hospitals and remote clinics, the lighter, cheaper humanoid could be a game changer.