Medical robots today typically act as extensions of a surgeon’s hands, rather than taking over for them. But autonomous surgical robots that learn as they go will be in our future, says Harvard Medical School’s Pierre Dupont, augmenting the skills of clinicians, not replacing them. “We’re working on transcatheter valve repair procedures that right now are done by hand,” he said. “Clinicians need to do a lot of these procedures to get good at them — and to stay that way. We have seen in my lab that adding a robotic teleoperation makes them easier.” Patients in less urban areas sometimes don’t have access to medical centers that offer the newest treatments, or they must travel to hospitals in larger urban areas to undergo certain procedures. Adding learning-based autonomous functionality would make it possible for specialized procedures to be safely offered in low-volume facilities. “If you can enable community hospitals to offer these services, even though they’re low-volume, that’s...