Zurich researchers operate on pig 9,300 kilometres away

Swiss researchers have operated on a pig in Hong Kong from their laboratory in Zurich. + Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox It is the first time that a magnetic stomach tube developed for this purpose has been used remotely on a living animal, the federal technology institute ETH Zurich announced on Monday. The researchers hope that this will improve surgical care in remote areas where there is a lack of specialist knowledge. The procedure was carried out in May as part of a joint study by ETH Zurich and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Researchers reported their experiment in the journal Advanced Intelligent Systems. According to the university, ETH doctoral student Alexandre Mesot controlled the feeding tube with the joystick of a Playstation controller. He watched on a screen as the probe moved through the stomach of the anaesthetized pig, which was lying around 9,300 kilometres away in an operating theatre. Magnetic stomach tube In addition to a good ...