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Brain Surgery Robot Running Linux
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?"
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first reply, anyway though, imagine this. Your loved one undergoing brain surgery, half-way through the docter comes out and says, "Sorry, we had a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death)"
If there is nothing left worth living, what are you willing to die for?
I only want a human fondling my brain, thank you.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
The Microsoft press release title will be...
"Using Linux causes death!"
If Linux messes up there's nobody to sue. At least Microsoft will give me more money to shut up.
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
I was considering Laser realignment on my eyes, but when I went to talk to the eye doc, I found out his machine was running windows (NT IIRC).
I left immediately.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
$5 to the first surgeon to type that in.
People generally have brain surgery because their mind is malfunctioning.
'Most men would sooner die than think, and most men do.'
"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
... matters most. It is the software that do the drilling, cutting etc.
From the article:
The speed and precision hinge on the software program written by researchers at NTU's department of mechanical and production engineering.
... to let this thing operate on him if he were ever diagnosed with a brain tumor?
Would any of you kernel hackers feel safe if your own code operated on your brain?
Well, still better than the Blue Screen of Braindeath...
Szo
Red Leader Standing By!
The team hopes to begin human trials by the middle of next year, following the completion of animal tests. Trials have been successfully conducted on cadavers.
"So far, no animals have volunteered, but since we're using Linux we expect lots of penguins to sign up." said Dr Yeo Tseng Tsai. In a subsequent interview RMS pointed out that if they had used the correct term GNU/Linux, they might have had more volunteers from the Gnu community. "I told you so. That's what happens when you leave out the GNU part.", explained RMS.
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
I am not sure how comfortable with this i am, not becuase i at all think linux is prone to fail but becuase linux is capable of failing. Kernel panics still happen, like, once in a billion years. Linux just never struck me as an OS you need when, like, it is absolutely essential that absolutely nothing go wrong ever. Like when you are running some kind of control system for an airplane, or controlling a robot drilling holes in people's skulls. I don't think linux or even bsd would be a great choice in those cases, though i sure as hell don't think windows should even be considered given their track record in such situations.
Aren't there any OSes about at the moment that are like all redundant and correctness-proven and stuff, like with NASA-like failure margins? Wouldn't it be better to be using those instead?
Is this reasonable of me to say?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I find it odd that even though the story has nothing to do with microsoft the company still gets mentioned. Will the linux community ever get over their penis envy of the more successful counterpart? I doubt it.
Can I help you:
* Saw the skull open?
* Find the front lobes?
* Adjust the frontal lobes so that Microsoft products seem to be a good idea?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Free Brain Surgery Distribution, or FreeBSD for short? :o)
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
If the OS with the program driving the robot "crashes", the robot will certainly turn itself off. (It is unimaginable that such a product would be designed otherwise.) So nothing dangerous will happen, the operation will just be delayed by a minute until the computer is re-booted.
Having said that, one might go a different route and produce all the software needed (including the driver itself) using formal methods, if you want 100.00% safety (minus epsilon for human errors in the formal requirement descriptions).
Okay, maybe I'm just a nut.
But when someone goes and builds a robot that performs brain surgery (or even, as in this case, parts of brain surgery), how on earth is "The Interesting Part" that it runs Linux?! I, personally, would suppose that the interesting part is that it Does Brain Surgery.
"Hey, I just designed a program that can perfectly predict storm patterns across north america a year in advance!"
"Yeah, well, if it runs on Microsoft, go tell someone who cares."
-d
=== "Some people see the glass as half-empty. Others see it as half-full. I see the glass as too big." -G. Carlin.