Cedars-Sinai Establishes Center for Autonomous Robotic Surgery

Cedars-Sinai has launched the Center for Autonomous Robotic Surgery, a new initiative bringing surgeons and engineers together to develop the next generation of surgical robots capable of performing certain surgical tasks autonomously while working alongside surgeons in the operating room.

Andrew J. Hung, MD, a urologist and minimally invasive robotic surgery specialist in the Cedars-Sinai Department of Urology, will serve as co-director of the new center. Partnering with Hung as co-director is Michael C. Yip, PhD, who joins Cedars-Sinai from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and holds a joint faculty appointment in Urology and Computational Biomedicine.

At UCSD, Yip directed the Advanced Robotics and Controls Laboratory and developed expertise in surgical robotics, machine learning and autonomous systems. Together, Hung and Yip form a surgeon-scientist partnership designed to bridge the gap between the operating room and the engineering lab.

“For too long, the development of surgical robots has happened at a distance from the operating room, but the Center for Autonomous Robotic Surgery changes that,” said Hung, an internationally recognized leader in the integration of AI and machine learning into robotic surgery. “As surgeons, we know what good surgery looks like. By embedding clinical expertise directly into the engineering process, we can build autonomous systems that surgeons will trust and patients will benefit from. This is where the future of robotic surgery will be built.”

Hung’s experience in robotic surgery and research into AI-driven surgical performance metrics will help guide how autonomous systems function in the operating room. Yip’s engineering science innovation will make the vision possible.

Together, they plan to develop the next generation of surgical robots and surgeon-driven autonomous systems designed to augment a surgeon’s clinical judgment rather than replace it, making it possible to treat more complex diseases and reach more patients. The goal is to make surgery safer, more precise and more available.

“Surgical robotics has reached a turning point,” Yip said. “We now have the tools, from machine learning to advanced sensing, to build systems that genuinely understand the surgical environment and be able to autonomously support the surgical team in real time. Co-creating this center at Cedars-Sinai gives me the opportunity to bring the leading edge in surgical robot intelligence into clinical practice, working directly with physicians who are treating patients every day to make sure it is translated responsibly and effectively.”

As the co-directors embark on this new initiative for Cedars-Sinai, Hung and Yip are recruiting clinicians, engineers and data scientists to join the center’s multidisciplinary team building the future of robotic surgery.

“The launch of the Center for Autonomous Robotic Surgery marks a pivotal moment for surgical innovation at Cedars-Sinai,” said Jeffrey A. Golden, MD, executive vice dean of Research and Education and director of the Burns and Allen Research Institute. “Dr. Hung and Dr. Yip represent exactly the kind of partnership we need to move this field forward. Their respective leadership will give the Center for Autonomous Robotic Surgery a rare ability to develop autonomous systems that are both scientifically rigorous and grounded in real patient care.”

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