YouTuber Michael Reeves crafted an ingenious, yet dangerous, surgery machine that left Twitch star Imane ‘Pokimane’ Anys stunned when asked to test out the device.
Reeves, who is known for creating outlandish machines, built the code and body of his surgical robot from scratch – and even added in some VR hand-tracking to completely remove the need for a controller.
“You just take the hand coordinates from this and pipe them into the surgery robot and bing, bang, boom,” he explained.
While Michael could have waited for Amazon to deliver a scalpel to him, the YouTuber decided to up the ante with a huge kitchen knife he had laying around the house.
“When you really think about it, scalpels are just sh*tty, smaller knives,” he realized. “So why don’t we just use bigger, better knives? Hello, we already have those.”
The video’s tone then shifted to a hilariously-designed infomercial of sorts, with Reeves’ narration playing over stock footage of doctors and hospitals.
“The future of surgical robotics is here!” he exclaimed over footage of himself playing with the robot, which had a knife attached to it.
Dressed as a surgeon, Reeves showed off the power of his robot by having it dig into a pineapple as if it were a patient.
The video took a dark turn, however, once Pokimane was asked to test out of the device on a dummy.
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(Timestamp 6:10 for mobile users)
“We’ve made our machine so intuitive that anyone can do surgery with no prior training,” Reeves said as Anys walked into the makeshift operating room to perform a “usability test.”
Mere moments after putting her hand out, the VR hand tracking software sent the knife flying towards the Twitch celebrity, causing her to scream in shock.
As the test continued, Pokimane was asked to make a small incision right above the dummy’s ear and ended up stabbing the would-be patient, causing lots of “blood” to leak out of its head.
😳 🔪
— pokimane (@pokimanelol) April 28, 2020
The whole test definitely was a botched procedure, so while the robot does in fact work, it seems like it will need some more tests before it becomes a staple of health care systems worldwide.
Nonetheless, it was a cool project and one that Reeves should absolutely keep perfecting in the weeks ahead.