Ericsson and King's College demonstrate remote 5G touch surgery

Using the robotic representation of a biological finger, 5G technology transmits the sense of touch to the surgeon during the operation, controlled and monitored through software-defined networks.

During the recent celebration of the event 5G World 2016, at the end of last June at the Olympia in London, Ericsson and the King’s College performed a demonstration of 5G touch surgery with the robotic representation of a biological finger.

This robotic catheter or finger provides the surgeon with the sense of touch and allows him to detect the precise and real-time location of hard nodules in the soft tissue in a minimally invasive intervention., in addition to identifying cancerous tissue and sending information to the surgeon in the form of a haptic response.

At the Ericsson stand at this event, Visitors were able to experience 5G latency by controlling the movements of the robotic finger with a haptic glove. Once this catheter detects hard tissue in the simulation, returns a haptic signal to the user's device, in addition to having contact with what is happening thanks to the close vision of a soft tissue replica.

This remote 5G touch surgery demonstration has been made possible thanks to software-defined networks, configured to deliver the quality of service needed when using end-to-end network slicing, one of the new concepts of 5G.

As Valter D'Avino has pointed out, Ericsson director for Western and Central Europe, “Through this 5G simulation demonstration we show that latency is a critical part of what 5G can offer, transmitting both the sense of touch and an essential video signal in real time of the remote surgery”.

Professor Mischa Dohler, head of the Telecommunications Research Center of the computer science department at King's College London, For his part, he points out that “with the capacity of 5G we are able to develop advanced and minimally invasive remote surgery.”; The number of applications increases and the advantages are no longer geographically limited. “5G allows control and scalability of global diagnosis and intervention”.