Ericsson has joined forces with King's College London to explore the potential of 5G technology to support tactile robotic surgery.
Ericsson and King's College will demonstrate the 5G use case of tactile robotic surgery at 5G World 2016 in London, which is taking place today and tomorrow.
The demonstration will show a probe acting as a robotic representation of a biological finger that gives surgeons the sense of touch while performing minimally invasive surgery. This is achieved by sending real-time localization of hand nodules in soft tissue.
The robotic finger is able to identify cancer tissue and send information back to the surgeon as haptic - or sensory - feedback.
Information is sent through software defined networking configured to provide a high QoS by implementing network slicing end-to-end, which is one of the newest 5G concepts.
“Through this 5G simulation demonstration we can show how latency is a critical part of what 5G can deliver, bringing both the sense of touch and an essential real-time video feed to remote surgery,” Ericsson head of Western and Central Europe Valter D'Avino said.
Professor Mischa Dohler, head of the Centre for Telecommunications Research in the Department of Informatics at King's College London, added that the technology has the potential to enable a range of new healthcare applications.
“By 5G enabling enhanced minimally invasive remote surgery, the number of applications escalates and the advantages are no longer geographically localized. It enables worldwide mentorship and scalability of diagnosis and intervention,” he said.