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Autonomous Robotic Dentist - Would You Say 'Ahhh'?

Perceptive has an autonomous robotic dental system that can perform extensive procedures in fewer steps. You may change your mind, depending on how you answered the question posed in the title.


(Robotic autonomous dentist)

The entry point for the robot is crown installation, where the top part of a tooth is replaced with an artificial cap (the crown). This is an incredibly common procedure, and it usually happens in two phases. First, the dentist will remove the top of the tooth with a drill. Next, they take a mold of the tooth so that a crown can be custom fit to it. Then they put a temporary crown on and send you home while they mail the mold off to get your crown made. A couple weeks later, the permanent crown arrives, you go back to the dentist, and they remove the temporary one and cement the permanent one on.

With Perceptive’s system, it instead goes like this: on a previous visit where the dentist has identified that you need a crown in the first place, you’d have gotten a scan of your tooth with the OCT imager. Based on that data, the robot will have planned a drilling path, and then the crown could be made before you even arrive for the drilling to start, which is only possible because the precise geometry is known in advance. You arrive for the procedure, the robot does the actually drilling in maybe five minutes or so, and the perfectly fitting permanent crown is cemented into place and you’re done.

(Via IEEE Spectrum.)

An early mention of the idea of a robotic dentist can be found in science fiction author Cyril Kornbluth's 1952 short story Make Mine Mars:

It was a couple of front rooms on the second floor, with a mechanical dentist below, an osteopath above, and a “ride-up-and-save” parka emporium to the rear.

(Read more about the mechanical dentist)

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