Surgical procedures assisted by robots are nothing new -- they can be more precise and less invasive -- and now it looks like a new upgrade could make them even better. The main drawback of a surgical robot is that the human surgeon performing the operation gets no tactile feedback, but that's not the case with Sofie. Sofie, a joystick controlled robot gives haptic feedback to the surgeon by adjusting the resistance the controls give to indicate how much pressure is being exerted, surely a welcome addition to bots of this kind. This robot is also more compact than many earlier bots of this kind, and its creators are
