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Brain Surgery Robot Running Linux

Posted by michael on from the brain-fondling dept.

hherb writes "Singapore has developed a robotic brain surgeon. The interesting bit: based on a Linux platform. Well, what else? Who in his right mind would like to have his brain fondled by a MS product?"

4 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. Heh by Lebannen · · Score: 5, Informative

    Anothe nicely misleading title... after reading the article, the robot is used to drill through the porous bone of the skull. This is no mean feat by itself, reducing a 6-hour drill to a 3-hour drill, but surgeons still have to feed the robot all information on blood vessels, nerves, and sensitive areas.

    That being said, it's still pretty impressive. And I thought dentists were bad enough...

    --
    Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst looking for a rock
  2. Utility only by BuR4N · · Score: 3, Informative

    "The programmers can then map the access path, program the robotic arm to hold the drilling tool and begin the surgery. The program is written on a Linux platform."

    Looks like the "setup" program is written for some Linux distro , no actual surgery is done using a machine running Linux.

    I would neither have Bill or Linus software poking around in my head, neither OS is deterministic or suited for an operation like that.

    --
    http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
  3. Re:Right Mind by ProlificSage · · Score: 2, Informative
    People generally have brain surgery because their mind is malfunctioning.

    No, psychiatrists are used when the mind is malfunctioning, but the brain itself may not require surgery. Brain surgeons are used when there is something wrong with the brain that can only be corrected by surgery, such as a tumor. A condition such as that may not necessarily cause a malfunction of the mind, it could be causing physical symptoms instead, such as headaches, paralysis, etc. So, it is possible to be in your right mind and still require brain surgery. In which case, I'd feel more comfortable with Linux. The question, of course, then becomes, "Which distribution do you trust most to drill into your skull?"

    As an aside, Microsoft's motto for a similar product would probably be, "Where do you want to drill today?" :-)

    --
    Real software engineers regret the existence of COBOL, FORTRAN and BASIC.
  4. It's not run on a linux platform by ilsie · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's coded on a linux platform. I'm sure they're using some kind of custom RTOS, which would be much more suitable for this kind of task.