Robot surgery on humans could be trialled within decade (opens in new tab)

VR surgery (ie remote) was done already in the 90ies, as esp. need by the US navy in its submarines. This used "robots" of course.

AI assisted surgery is the current state of the art. The AI sees much more than the human eye.

And the robot is much better and smaller than the human hand. See microsurgery

I'm pretty sure full AI robot surgery can be done right now already. There's no technical gap missing.

This would be really interesting, but I can imagine it would be something like:

Robot lays out plan, step by step, showing step one and exactly what it's going to do.

Clinician says yes, do step one.

Robot adjusts plan based on observations, showing (new) step two and exactly what it's going to do.

Clinician says yes, do step two.

Etc.

I can't imagine it will just be a robot that does everything fully end to end (as it were).