You could call it the invasion of the mini-robots from Nebraska. They surfaced in Seattle, San Jose, Myrtle Beach, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C.. and as far away as Great Britain, Africa, Australia and China.
That’s just a small sampling of where a Nebraska-born technological triumph surfaced in newspapers, publications and other media worldwide, thanks to an Associated Press story that was picked up last week by nearly 200 news outlets.
The mini-robots, which could some day replace open surgery and allow doctors on earth to do surgery on astronauts in space, made their public debut Wednesday at a UNMC news conference.
The mini robotic technology is the result of a collaborative effort that began three years ago between UNMC faculty and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Engineering.
Dmitry Oleynikov, M.D., director of education and training for the minimally invasive and computer-assisted surgery initiative at UNMC is one of the robots’ inventors and director of UNMC’s minimally invasive surgery program.
“As researchers, we always feel like nobody appreciates or understands what we do and when it is finally out like this, it validates our hard efforts,” Dr. Oleynikov said.
“We had applied for research grants and some agencies turned us down because they did not believe we could get (the robots) to work. Now I hope they’ll reconsider.”