A history of robots: from science fiction to surgical robotics

Abstract

Surgical robotics is an evolving field with great advances having been made over the last decade. The origin of robotics was in the science-fiction literature and from there industrial applications, and more recently commercially available, surgical robotic devices have been realized. In this review, we examine the field of robotics from its roots in literature to its development for clinical surgical use. Surgical mills and telerobotic devices are discussed, as are potential future developments.

Keywords: Minimally invasive surgery; Robot; Robotic surgery; Robotics; Zeus; daVinci.

Fig. 1

Graph depicting the number of manuscripts indexed per year in a PubMed search containing the words “robot” or “robotic”

Fig. 2

The daVinci S surgical system. The surgeon’s console is shown on the left and the robot arm tower on the right

Fig. 3

The surgeon’s hands rest in grips that are in line with the visual axis of the binocular viewers

Fig. 4

A variety of the 8 mm endowristed instruments

Fig. 5

The binocular endoscope places two glass rods in line, with each sending an image to a distinct camera head

Fig. 6

The Zeus surgical system with its table-mounted arms (left) and the surgeon’s console (right)