San Diego, California– Humanoid robots have performed two surgeries on pigs for the first time, a new development that researchers say could be a game-changer for hospitals in the future.
The procedures and results were published in Nature on July 8 and involved engineers and surgeons from the University of California, San Diego.
More: Business vs social robots? Accessibility-focused humanoid robots were on display at the Silicon Valley Summit
One of the surgeries was performed by a human-like robot assisted by a surgeon, while the second surgery was performed by two human-like robots, according to the university. Robots have removed gallbladders in pigs, an important step before the experiments move to human trials.
“It worked perfectly well as a proof of concept,” Dr. Ryan Broderick, interim director of the Center for the Future of Surgery at UC San Diego, told ABC News.
Humanoid robots have a head and arms, and are smaller than many surgical robots used in hospitals today, which require a lot of space. Researchers and doctors even gave the humanoid robots a nickname – “Surgie”.
More: A new Silicon Valley restaurant uses robots to make hamburgers: Here’s a look
“The space constraints were not there as they are in traditional robotic surgery,” Broderick said. “It was a human-type bedside assistant, so it fit perfectly into the space that we’re traditionally used to doing laparoscopic surgery.”
Doctors and researchers say they hope the “surgery” can be used outside the hospital operating room in the future.
“You can imagine this device being deployed on a ship, in a village somewhere, in a smaller operating environment that doesn’t exist in major cities,” said Dr. Shangli Liu, a colorectal surgeon at UC San Diego. “I think this opens a lot of doors for access.”
Video: Future Fight Club: VR-controlled boxing robots battle in San Francisco
Doctors and researchers also said they believe the “surgery” could help ease staffing shortages at the hospital and help with more surgeries in the future.
“I think we’ve shown that it’s possible to use humanoid robots in the operating room to perform real-world procedures that could ultimately save lives,” said Michael Yip, a professor at the University of California, San Diego.
Copyright © 2026 ABC, Inc.