Description

One of three prototypes for the Black Falcon.

Acting like an extension of the surgeon's own hands and fingers, the Black Falcon robot allows doctors to grasp and suture tissue during minimally invasive procedures. Surgeons operate a hand-held "master" device to control the "slave" arm equipped at its tip with a highly maneuverable metal wrist and fingers. Black Falcon's software filters out hand tremors while allowing the surgeon to feel the forces encountered by the Falcon's hand operating within the patient's body.

Inspired by his father's work in arthroscopic surgery, Ahkil Madhani designed Black Falcon for his doctoral thesis in Mechanical Engineering at MIT's AI Lab, under the supervision of Kenneth Salisbury. The teleoperated surgical robot earned Madhani the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for Inventiveness in 1998.