Vicarious Surgical Robot Surgeons: Is it too early or too late?
Vicarious Surgical Inc. (RBOT), a manufacturer of robotic surgery systems, has seen its stock price fall by 68% since the beginning of the year, to $3.33 at auction on June 16. The value of the stock market was $406.09 billion. Some investors don’t think Vicarious will work out, but there is still one thing to keep in mind.
At the moment, Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG) is the leader in the global market for robot surgeons. About 6000 of its Da Vinci robots are in use around the world. A large amount of experience has already been gathered, thousands of experts have been trained, and supplies of parts and maintenance have been set up. You can’t switch to a different manufacturer because of a discount on a subscription for automated surgical equipment. To get a big piece of the robot surgeon market, you need a much bigger advantage than Intuitive Surgical has.
Vicarious Surgical plans to do this by coming up with new ideas. The robot surgeon, Vicarious Surgical, is made in a way that is different from other robots on the market. This means that the system can be developed much faster than with other robots. Vicarious Surgical’s working manipulator is actually a small-scale kinematic diagram of a person. His “head” is a small camera that can be moved, and his “hands” are tools that can be switched out.
All of this is obviously more flexible than the human body, so the surgeon can do the operation in the safest way possible. But the idea behind it is so simple that it’s like muscle memory. The surgeon wears virtual reality glasses that let him see through the “eyes” of the camera. When he turns his head, the camera repeats how the person’s head moved. Robots with instruments follow the doctor’s hands. At the same time, the robot does what it has always done to protect a person: it stops a person’s hands from shaking when they are tired or from moving too quickly near a blood vessel.
The part of the robot that does the work is small enough that it could theoretically work through a small cut that is only 1.2 cm wide. Vicarious Surgical plans to start out with a system that can work through a 1.5 cm cut. Also, the Vicarious Surgical robot can quickly turn around, look back, and look to the side. This is important for stopping bleeding or other problems quickly. Due to the repetition of natural hand and head movements, surgeons will probably be able to learn how to use the system from Vicarious Surgical faster.
This is a very important benefit, maybe even more important than technical abilities. Since a robot surgeon costs between $1 and $2 million, it is important to use it as soon as possible. Also, the more experts who are able to use the system, the more different tasks can be done with its help. All of this combined cuts the robot’s payback time by a lot. So, Vicarious Surgical is still a place with a lot of danger. But the company definitely has a good idea that it can use on its own or sell to a bigger company.
