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Robot Operation, Pennsylvania, 1996

"Off the factory floor and into the operating theater, a modified industrial robot hangs poised over an obliging skeleton in Pittsburgh's Shadyside Hospital. During hip replacement surgery, ROBODOC drills a cavity in the femur (held by steel brace) so that the doctor can precisely fit an implant into the bone. Experts predict that within ten years such technology will enter most hospitals."

—From "Robot Revolution," July 1997, National Geographic magazine

Photograph by George Steinmetz