Publication | Open Access
Intelligent Soft Surgical Robots for Next‐Generation Minimally Invasive Surgery
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2021
Year
Soft Surgical RobotUrologyEngineeringSoft RoboticsSoft Tissue SurgeryRobotic TechnologyMedicineRobotic SurgerySoft Surgical RobotsBiomimetic ActuatorSurgeryBiomedical EngineeringRobot-assisted SurgeryRoboticsMedical RobotPlastic SurgerySoft Robotic Technologies
Minimally invasive surgery is rapidly evolving, and soft robotics—leveraging advanced materials, fabrication, and electronics—offers improved adaptability and safer interaction to overcome current technical challenges that rigid robots cannot address. The study aims to analyze surgeons’ expectations for next‑generation MIS and summarize recent progress in soft surgical instruments. The authors review recent advances in soft surgical instrument engineering design, fabrication techniques, and human–robot interaction. They discuss promising perspectives for intelligent soft surgical robots, suggesting that future developments will enable agile navigation, dexterous procedures, and maintain minimal invasiveness, positioning them as a propitious solution for future surgery.
Endowed with the expected visions for future surgery, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has become one of the most rapid developing areas in modern surgery. Soft robotics, which originates from interdisciplinary advances in materials, fabrication, and electronics, featuring better adaptability and safer interaction, holds great promises in addressing current technical challenges in MIS, which are difficult to be solved with current rigid robotic technologies. For the first time, herein, the expected characteristics of next‐generation MIS from the surgeons’ perspectives are analyzed and the recent progress of soft surgical instruments from three different aspects is comprehensively summarized: engineering design, fabrication techniques, and human–robot interaction. Perspectives of next‐generation soft surgical robots are then discussed, where some exciting possibilities are emphasized. It is believed that further developments of intelligent soft robotics enable the next‐generation MIS to agilely navigate to the target and conduct dexterous diagnostic or therapeutic procedures without any trade‐offs in invasiveness and ultimately be a propitious solution for future surgery.