Geostationary satellite breaks down geographical barriers in ultra-remote robotic hepatectomy

Healthcare inequality is a global challenge, with remote areas such as highlands and oceans lacking high-speed networks and specialized surgeons, making complex surgeries inaccessible. Conventional 5G telesurgery has a limited coverage radius (5,000 km) and relies on ground-based infrastructure. While satellite communication achieves global coverage (one satellite covers 1/3 of Earth’s surface), its 36,000-km altitude induces transmission latency exceeding 600 ms, far surpassing the surgical safety threshold (200 ms). Hence, achieving submillimeter precision under high latency is a major limitation for satellite-enabled telesurgery.

To that end, Prof. Rong Liu’s team from PLA General Hospital, collaborating with Northwestern Polytechnical University and Shanghai MicroPort MedBot, established a Lhasa-Beijing cross-regional link via the Asia-Pacific 6D high-throughput satellite. They implemented three key innovations:

1. Adaptive Latency Compensation System: Integrating delayed-error synchronization with real-time neural network prediction to stabilize robotic arm error at 0.32±0.07 mm under 632 ms latency (conventional methods exceeded 2 mm error);
2. Dual-Link Redundancy with Hot Switching: Backup 5G link activation within 280 ms upon satellite failure, with robotic arms autonomously entering position-hold mode;
3. Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation: Prioritized transmission of surgical commands and critical imaging, enabling 1080P video transfer at 7.2 Mbps (62% bandwidth savings vs. traditional full-view transmission).

Two patients, a 68-year-old male with liver cancer and a 56-year-old male with hepatic hemangioma, underwent successful surgeries:

• Duration: 105–124 min; Blood loss: 20 mL;
• Satellite latency: 632 ms; Data loss rate: 2.8%;
• Discharge within 24 hours; Complications: Clavien-Dindo Grade I (minimal).

Prof. Liu emphasized: "This technology expands a single surgical robot’s service radius from 5G’s 5,000 km to satellites’ 150,000 km. In disaster medicine scenarios—this is critical for battlefield and earthquake rescue operations."

###

Contact the author: RONG LIU, liurong301@126.com

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 200 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).