Health Checkup: Robotics - TIME

If your idea of surgery comes mainly from TV-doctor dramas, you'll find this operating suite at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit a bit disorienting. There's a major surgery in progress that's what they tell you, anyway but you can't see a patient. For that matter, you can't see the surgeon. There must be a scalpel wielder here somewhere, but all you can see is people sitting at machines in near darkness. The largest of the machines is a weird behemoth in the center of the room, spiderlike, shrouded in plastic sleeves and protective drapery.