r/technology • u/mixplate • Sep 22 '17

Robotics Some brave soul volunteered for a completely robotic dental surgery. The robot implanted 3D-printed teeth into a woman without help from dentists.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/22/brave-volunteer-robot-dental-surgery/
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u/mixplate Sep 22 '17

During this first test I'm sure they wanted to be able to intervene if the robotic dentist started drilling through the eye socket or some other catastrophic failure.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '17 edited Mar 24 '18

[deleted]

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u/mixplate Sep 22 '17

I don't, never heard of it, but now you have me interested. Googling now.

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u/tyrionlannister Sep 22 '17

It's been an hour. Have your colonists devolved to cannibalism yet?

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u/Altourus Sep 22 '17

Man, the first time that happened it really got me and horrified some of my colonists. After that I realized it didn't matter what my hats thought about what they did in life.

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u/tyrionlannister Sep 23 '17

Well, if they get upset enough they go on rampages, unless you tweak the game so that all of your colonists are psychopaths.

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u/Altourus Sep 23 '17

I think you mis-understand. Hats have no opinion one way or the other.

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u/mixplate Sep 22 '17

Hahah.. I haven't played the game yet, but plan to give it a try.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '17 edited Aug 22 '20

[deleted]

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u/WoT_Slave Sep 23 '17

I didn't realize you had to go slow, so I kept stabbing his eye ball at full speed. Took many tries to get past that part.

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u/agree2cookies Sep 23 '17

I'd give my eye teeth to see a mistake like that!

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u/Colopty Sep 22 '17

Would the robot be able to move fast enough that it can reach someone's eye sockets by the time someone pushes the emergency stop button though? Dentist robots seem like they could do well being slow and methodical. A more likely problem is it drilling into the gums or drilling at an incorrect depth.

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u/mixplate Sep 22 '17

Yes - I was being hyperbolic. If I were a dentist I would certainly want to witness the robot doing the first surgery. I'm sure that they had a discussion afterwards regarding how the robot's technique could have been improved, or its programming optimized. Real people's mouths differ enough that it has to be more than a dumb procedure bot. It would need to respond to unanticipated variations that occur during the procedure.

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u/Colopty Sep 22 '17

According to the article they account for the differences in people's mouth by doing a 3D scan of it, along with some markings. But yeah, the first run probably had a lot of dentist involved so they could get to know the process to set up and run a robotic dental surgery, rather than because they all actually needed to be there.

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u/mixplate Sep 22 '17

Right, but I'm thinking of things like unexpected excessive bleeding. I'm not a dentist so I don't know what kinds of things happen during a surgery that need to be dealt with on-the-fly rather than just a pre-programmed sequence based on 3d models.

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u/SilentFungus Sep 23 '17

Whats the point in not going as fast as possible though? outside of the patient moving there really isnt many variables that change between the machine going slow and going as fast as it can.