Automating Surgery: The Law of Autonomous Surgical Robots by David Britton* Autonomous surgical robots will soon operate on patients. Robots will use sensors to measure patients’ physiology and pathologies, use that information to plan how to complete the necessary surgical actions, and execute those plans by physically moving surgical tools–all without direct human control. These emerging surgical robots pose new questions for the legal and regulatory regimes surrounding medical devices and the practice of medicine. This paper builds on a growing body of legal scholarship about Robot Law to examine the legally-disruptive potential of robots in surgery. The United States…