Surgery in the future will look very different. Where now there may be up to a dozen medical professionals present in the operating theater, soon there may be only two or three, with robots having taken over many of the jobs done by nurses and support staff. Even the surgeon may be elsewhere.

未来的外科手术将会和现在有很大的不同。现在的手术室里面也许会有十多个医护人员，而将来或许就只有两三个了。护士和支持人员现在所做的大量工作将由机器人接管。医生甚至都会不在手术室里。

Telerobotics enables a doctor to do surgery at a distance. “It's easy to imagine a future where, if I need a medical specialist from afar, a robot could remotely become his or her eyes, hands, and ears,” says Joanne Pransky, an expert on robot psychiatry.

医生能够使用遥控机器人进行远程手术。机器人精神病学专家乔安妮·普兰斯基说：“不难想象，在未来，如果我需要一位身处远方的医学专家，机器人可以远程成为这位专家的眼睛、双手和耳朵。”

The first medical robots are already being used in hospitals now — the da Vinci Surgical System was approved for use by the U.S. government in 2000, and more will follow.

第一个医疗机器人已经在医院投入使用——达·芬奇外科手术系统已在2000年由美国政府批准使用，后期将会有更多的机器人投入使用。

“These robots work on the ‘master slave' concept, with the surgeon as the master,” says Dr. Ara Darzi. “The da Vinci system has three arms, and you can add a fourth, with 3D stereo imagery available during surgery. It also has a motion scaling concept, which can be scaled down to five- to-one, so you can be much more precise than a human hand could. The surgeon feels very similar sensations if he or she was working with their hands.”

“这些机器人在‘主从’概念下进行工作，外科医生就是主人，”阿拉·达兹医生说，“达·芬奇系统有三只手臂，你可以再增加第四只。手术中有三维立体图像。该系统还有动作尺度概念，可以从五级到一级，这样就比人手操作更加精确。医生操作起来会和他们用双手进行手术的感觉相似。”

The robots act as an extension of a practitioner's skills, which allows them to perform better by helping improve control and precision. Already robots are being used to position endoscopes, and even perform gallbladder surgery. The hope is that soon they will be able to perform major operations such as heart surgery, perhaps using nanotech tools — microscopic robots — that would make the need to crack open a patient's chest a thing of the past.

作为医师技能的延伸，机器人可以通过提高控制力和精确度让手术实施得更好。机器人已经被用于放置内窥镜，甚至进行胆囊手术。在不久的将来，机器人将有望能够实施心脏手术这样的大手术，或许能够通过纳米技术工具——显微机器人，让打开病人胸腔的需要成为历史。

Robots will also help surgeons cope with the exhaustion of long procedures, and the da Vinci system's mechanics have been programmed to compensate for the hand tremors tired surgeons sometimes suffer from.

机器人还可以帮助外科医生应对长时间进行手术产生的疲乏。科学家对达·芬奇系统进行了设计，以弥补外科医生在疲惫时出现的手颤问题。