ABSTRACT

Within the past 25 years, minimally invasive surgery has again evolved with the introduction of robotics. Historically, the concept of robotic technology was born through the collaborative efforts of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the Department of Defense, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). 1 The impetus for this concept was the need to be able to provide immediate operative care to wounded soldiers on the battlefield. Initial prototypes involved robotic arms that could be mounted on an armored vehicle in order to facilitate remote battlefield surgery. Soon thereafter, this technology became commercialized and robots were no longer just passive devices in surgery but ones that could be actively controlled in civilian operating rooms. It wasn’t long before these developments were applied to various surgical disciplines.