About 300 robots already are used in hospitals around the country, including several in Seattle, for minimally invasive surgeries. … The engineers also hope their robot eventually will be part of a trauma pod system (which is now being studied by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research arm of the Department of Defense) — an unmanned armored vehicle complete with an operating room, including body scans and robots performing the tasks of nurses and surgeons.

Another step in automated warfare, the Pentagon has awarded $12 million in grants to develop what they are calling a "trauma pod," in which a wounded soldier on a battlefield could be operated on on the spot robotically, with surgery from prep, scalpel, incision, to sutures and stitching all under the control of the surgeon who is operating safely somewhere behind the lines.

Wounded soldiers will be stabilized in the field by medics, and then moved to a "trauma pod" that will be in helicopters and ambulances.

The pod, which also was on display at the Army show, is the project of Col. William Wiesmann, M.D., of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He said a forward MASH unit will no longer be needed once the pod is in place because the same stabilizing tasks that used to be performed at the MASH will be accomplished from within the pod, which can fit on a standard stretcher.