Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). Researcher Akhil Madhani uses the Black Falcon robot he developed to perform MIS, also called laparoscopy or endo- scopic surgery, on a dummy's chest. It can perform MIS procedures which are difficult to do manually, such as heart surgery. A small incision is made & the robot's wrist unit (seen on monitor) is passed through it. Images are passed from a camera on the wrist by optical fibres to a surgeon, who remotely controls the surgical instruments on the robot's wrist. The wrist has 8 degrees of freedom to let it move like a human's hand & wrist. MIS reduces patient pain and recovery times. Photographed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.