Scientists Tout New Way To Debug Surgical Bots

coondoggie writes "When it comes to having robotic surgeons slicing around inside your brain, heart or other important body organ, surgeons and patients need to know that a software or hardware glitch isn't going to ruin their day. That's why a new technique developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory that promises to reliably detect software bugs and verify the software safety of surgical robots could be a significant development."

Comments

How to debug a surgical bot?

[jamesl]

Just run it through the autoclave.

Can detect buggy software?

[Zerth]

wow, does it solve the halting problem as well?

Re:Can detect buggy software?

[Jane Q. Public]

"wow, does it solve the halting problem as well?"

Pretty close to my thoughts as well.

Reliably finding all "bugs" is not possible without an intimate knowledge of exactly what the software is trying to accomplish. You can find certain kinds of errors algorithmically (what amount to "compile time" errors), and even prevent many kinds of run-time errors.

But there is simply no way to prevent the program from doing something unintentional (like cutting the wrong thing) without prior detailed knowledge of the actual intent.

Re:ruin their day ?

[ColdWetDog]

If the doctor doesn't ruin your life, then you don't get to ruin his day. Works for both 'concerns'.

Not that I'm sure the touted system will work as planned (it never does) but trying to minimize bad outcomes is sort of the whole point to improving medical practice.

It's not just BMWs and trophy wives.