An independent nonprofit research and development organization called SRI International has just recently announced that it will be taking surgery to new heights - literally - by conducting the first-ever robotic surgery demonstration in a simulated zero-gravity environment.

"In previous experiments, SRI successfully demonstrated how robots can be manipulated remotely and set-up with minimal training," said Thomas Low, director of SRI’s Medical Devices and Robotics program. "We are now extending that technology to movement and weightlessness, critical elements of any space travel program."

The demonstration will be performed by SRI's M7 robot aboard a NASA C-9 aircraft on September 25 to 28. The demonstration will, among other things, determine how well a robot surgeon can stack up against a human surgeon in terms of precision and speed.

SRI hopes that its telerobotics technology, which will be used to control the robot surgeon from thousands of miles away, could pave the way for providing emergency medical and surgical care in remote locations as well as allowing time-critical procedures to be performed in moving vehicles.