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Vicarious Surgical’s mission is to make surgeries safer. The company created a robotic system featuring a camera with 360-degree views: surgeons wear a VR headset while controlling the robot’s two arms, each with 28 sensors for extreme precision. The starting point? A 1.5 cm (0.6 in.) incision through which the robot enters the patient’s body. “Complication rates from open surgeries are 15% to 20%, just from the incision,” says Vicarious Surgical CEO Adam Sachs. “By making incisions really small … you can knock complication rates down to about 1%.” The company, which went public last year, is currently building its Beta 2 prototype with plans to introduce the $1.2 million system to hospitals as early as 2024.
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