In 1954 George Devol created the first programmable industrial robot. It consisted of a multijointed manipulator arm and a magnetic storage device to hold and replay instructions. More advanced versions worked on assembly lines in the 1960s. In 1978 the PUMA (Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly) was introduced by Victor Scheinman and quickly became the standard for commercial robots.
Dr. Yik San Kwoh..(b. 1946) invented the robot- software interface that allowed the first robot-aided surgery in 1985. "Ole"' was a modified PUMA that could perform a type of neurosurgery. In the surgery, a small probe traveled into the skull, a linked CT scanner provided a 3D picture of the brain, and the robot plotted the best path to the lesion. "Ole" was used for biopsies of deeply located suspected tumors.
Before his device could be used on humans, Kwoh needed to test it. Small metal objects were inserted into four watermelons. The robot quickly located the objects and inserted an instrument to remove them.
Robots have since grown more complex and can now assist and even perform surgeries. In 1998 Dr. Friedrich-Wilhelm Mohr used a Da Vinci surgical robot to perform the first robotically assisted coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) at Leipzig in Germany.
In 1999 the world's first surgical robotics "heating- heart" CABG was performed at the London Health Sciences Center in Ontario, Canada, using a ZEUS surgical robot. In this type of surgery, the sternum of the patient is not opened, and the heart is not stopped as it is in conventional bypass surgeries.
