A group of students at the University of Washington are using Microsoft's Kinect to aid in robotic surgery. While the hack won't make surgical robots the next Doogie Howser, it does give them a sense of touch.

Robotic surgery is nothing new, but normally the robot is only used in a support role for the surgeon. Now in a first of its kind procedure, a pair of robots were used to partially remove a man's prostate, with direct contact from the human surgeons.

When doctors need to perform a coronary bypass, it typically involves cracking open the patient's chest and stopping all functions of the heart. From Waseda University in Japan comes a robot that could end the need for that second step,...

In the future, surgery might be a lot less invasive thanks to some downright-amazing new medical technologies. New devices, called microgrippers, could be swallowed by a patient and then activated via chemicals and magnets to do surgical work inside the...