Fully Robotic Surgery May Depend On Elon Musk's Mission To Mars

Fully robotic surgery may be a couple of decades away. But one thing could speed it up: billionaire engineer Elon Musk's very public mission to Mars. Early this year a fully autonomous robot completed a complex soft tissue surgery for the very first time at Johns Hopkins University. The Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, or STAR, "excelled at suturing two ends of intestine--one of the most intricate and delicate tasks in abdominal surgery," Johns Hopkins reported. That said, there is a big caveat.