We're not saying that one day your surgeon might look like Johnny Five, but it's looking more and more possible that the fingers getting all up in your guts will be metal, rather than flesh and bone. A team of scientists with the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC has created a robot capable of performing surgery on soft tissue.

Designed and programmed by Azad Shademan, Peter Kim and their team, the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot proved even more adept at soft-tissue surgery than experienced human surgeons, at least in this particular test surgery, according to a paper published today in Science Translational Medicine.

To improve on current technology to a point where this was possible, the team worked on improving the robot's vision.