The rise of the robot startups

Starting a robotics company may seem like the coolest job in the world, but in reality requires a lot of grit and hard work, said a panel of experts. Imagine a surgeon's assistant who never feels sleepy, never suffers from tremors and never lets emotions get in the way of work. Fortunately for surgeons, this miraculous being indeed exists in the form of the da Vinci surgical robot, now widely used to perform minimally invasive surgery in Singapore's hospitals. Made by US company Intuitive, the robot is also a boon for patients, who recover much faster post-operation, said Dr Joseph Ng, chairman of the Gynaecologic Robot-Assisted Cancer & Endoscopic Surgery (GRACES) programme at Singapore's National University Hospital. For instance, while traditional surgery for endometrial cancer entails a six-day hospital stay and some 300 millilitres of blood loss in the hands of a good surgeon, a patient who undergoes robotic surgery can go home on the same day, and loses a tenth as much blood even if she is operated on by a trainee surgeon.