The experiment was successfully performed in a New York clinic using a PlayStation controller.
Barcelona-based Spanish startup Overture Life has built a sperm injection robot that can be controlled using a PlayStation controller for in vitro fertilization (IVF). The team successfully used the robot to fertilize human eggs, resulting in two healthy babies.
The experiment was successfully conducted in a New York clinic to fertilize more than a dozen eggs, resulting in healthy embryos and two girls, the first people born after fertilization by a robot.
As reported by the magazine MIT Technology Reviewone of the engineers involved in developing the first insemination robot didn’t have much experience in the field of fertility medicine, which is where the PlayStation 5 controller came into play.
A process that looks like a game
“I was calm,” said Eduard Alba, the engineer who uses the PlayStation controller. “At that very moment, I thought, ‘It’s just another experiment.’
If the process seems less futuristic than expected, that’s because it is. It’s just an update on traditional IVF, involving human specialists who combine a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm together in a plate using a special needle under a microscope, which sometimes, but not always, results in in fertilization. .
Because it is so delicate and labor-intensive, the current IVF process is very expensive, costing an estimated $20,000 per pregnancy attempt in the United States, according to the report.
Today, around 500,000 babies are born through IVF worldwide, yet the vast majority of people don’t have the money to undergo the procedure or pay for medications. This is where startups like Overture come into play. They aim to make the process cheaper and more accessible by automating more and more parts of the process.
Other startups like AutoIVF, IVF 2.0, and Fertilis are also looking to automate the IVF process with miniaturization technology.
Just a first step of IVF
So far, Overture has raised about $37 million, the biggest of the bunch, with heavyweight backers like former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.
According to experts, this is only an incremental step towards full automation of the process.
“The concept is extraordinary, but this is a small step,” said fertility doctor Gianpiero Palermo of Weill Cornell Medical Center, who developed the common intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) procedure in the 1990s.
Palermo added that Overture’s engineers still had to manually load sperm into the injector needles, meaning “it’s not robotic ICSI yet.”
Either way, it’s an impressive breakthrough in fertility medicine. And it’s surprising that it was all done with a PlayStation controller…
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Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
