At the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, the world's biggest robofest, Japansese researchers demonstrated a robot designed to train doctors to operate inside blood vessels.

Researchers showed the Micro Surgery Robot operating on the veins of a transparent human dummy. By guiding the robot, a medical student or a doctor can learn about endovascular treatment, or operations in which patients are treated through tubes inserted into their veins. Endovascular treatment is popular for victims of a stroke because it places less stress on them.

Robots in healthcare seem to be developing in three main ways: operational (like this one), anthropomorphic (like ASIMO: see "Robots in healthcare") and miniature (sometimes called nanobots)...