Surgical Robotics

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Overview

Surgical robotics studies robotic tools and systems that support clinicians, from teleoperated procedures to autonomous assistance. Approaches combine mechanisms such as continuum robots and steerable catheters with remote-center-of-motion control, haptics, and perception methods for tracking instruments and reconstructing anatomy. Learning methods include imitation learning, reinforcement learning, vision-language-action models, and world models, evaluated in simulation and on platforms such as the dVRK, with video benchmarks including JIGSAWS and EndoVis. A central challenge is translating results from simulation, phantoms, and animal studies into reliable clinical systems that generalize across anatomy and equipment while enforcing safety and keeping clinicians involved.

Latest papers

CardsList

192 papers29 papers in the last four weeks, up 7% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. Language-Conditioned Behavioral Cloning for Autonomous Endoscope Guidance

    Oct 30, 2026Ariel Rodriguez, Lorenzo Mazza, Ortrun Hellig +3Robotic EndoscopySurgical Robotics

    NCT/UCC Dresden, UKDD Dresden, TU Dresden, DKFZ Heidelberg. · BMFTR Research Hub 6G-Life. · The Center for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI), TUD, Dresden, Germany. +1

  2. Sensorium: An Open-Source Multimodal Data Collection and Curation Library for Embodied Surgical AI

    Oct 30, 2026Lorenzo Mazza, Ariel Rodriguez, Stefanie SpeidelRobotic Data CollectionMultimodal Dataset

    NCT/UCC Dresden, UKDD Dresden, TU Dresden, DKFZ Heidelberg. · BMFTR Research Hub 6G-Life. · Cluster of Excellence CeTI. +1

  3. Physically Constrained Kinematic Calibration for High-Precision Robotic Needle Guidance

    Oct 30, 2026Prabhu Nithin Gollapudi, Andreas Maier, Franziska Mathis-Ullrich +3Robot KinematicsSurgical Robotics

    Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany · Precision Medtech Co., Ltd, Beijing, China

  4. SimRetract: Zero-Shot Sim-to-Real Robotic Assistance for Retractor Take-Over in Open Surgery

    Oct 28, 2026Xucheng Wang, Zhizhou Yang, Sung Eun Kim +7Surgical RoboticsSim-to-Real Transfer

    Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School · Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital · Weill Cornell Medical College +1

  5. Active Constraints for Simultaneous Guidance and Safety in Handheld Micromanipulation

    Oct 27, 2026Roger Ho, Robert A. MacLachlan, Cameron N. RiviereRobotic ManipulationSafe Robot Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Institute, CMU, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA

  6. Semantic-Coupled Perception Framework for Autonomous Laparoscope Control

    Oct 25, 2026Enduo Zhao, Fangzhou Li, Yujie Zhu +4Surgical RoboticsRobotic Perception

    School of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. · School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.

  7. Multimodal Progress-Residual Fusion for Anticipating Navigation Retreat in Robotic Flexible Endoscopy

    Oct 22, 2026Chi Kit Ng, Tianchun Wu, Jiatan Sun +3Robotic EndoscopySurgical Robotics

  8. Revisiting Distribution Matching for State-to-Vision Policy Distillation in Laparoscopic Robotic Manipulation

    Oct 22, 2026Mingyu Sheng, Jianan Fan, Dongnan Liu +3Robotic ManipulationVision-Based Robot Control

    School of Computer Science, the University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia · Institude of Medical Robotics, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China · Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States

  9. Live Thread Reconstruction for Autonomous Manipulation

    Oct 22, 2026Emma Huang, Omar Hernandez, Zih-Yun Chiu +1Robotic ManipulationSurgical Robotics

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA. · Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218 USA.

  10. High-Precision RCM Motion for Ophthalmic Robotics via Hierarchical QP Control and Authority-Guided Recovery Planning

    Oct 20, 2026Huanyu Tian, Adriana Namour, Lingyun Zeng +4Robotic ControlSurgical Robotics

    H. Tian, A. Namour, L. Zeng, Z. Wu, S. Ourselin and C. Bergeles are with the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King’s College London, UK. · L. da Cruz is with Moorfields Eye Hospital, NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.

  11. Velocity Optimization via Thermal Imaging Enhances Autonomous Tumor Resection

    Oct 20, 2026Naveed D. Riaziat, Jiawei Ge, Ethan Kilmer +6Surgical RoboticsFeedback Control

    Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland · Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland

  12. SurGPT: A Multi-Task Foundation Model for Robotic Surgical Skills Assessment and Gesture Recognition

    Oct 18, 2026Parham M. Kebria, Saeid Nahavandi, Mehrdad Saif +1Surgical Video UnderstandingSurgical Robotics

    Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC, USA · Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC, Australia · Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Allston, MA, USA +3

  13. EndoVLA-OOV: Language-Conditioned Out-of-View Target Acquisition in Robotic Endoscopy

    Oct 17, 2026Chi Kit Ng, Yidong Zhang, Tianchun Wu +9Robotic EndoscopyVision-Based Robot Control

    Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China · The Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China · Department of Surgery, Prince of Wales Hospital, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China +1

  14. Design and Characterization of a Unified Continuum Robot Actuation Platform

    Oct 14, 2026Yunti Xu, Aedan Mangan, Miheer Potdar +2Modular RoboticsContinuum Robot Design

    Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego, CA, 92093, USA.

  15. SurgiCLAW: An Interpretable Atomic-Skill Agent for Precision Robotic Micromanipulation

    Oct 11, 2026Angen Ye, junjie xie, Yujia Song +2Robotic ManipulationSurgical Robotics

    Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

  16. SurgCast: Action-Conditioned Future Skeletons for Controllable Surgical World Models

    Oct 11, 2026Wanhao Liu, Rulin Zhou, Liangjing Shao +9World Models for RoboticsAction-Conditioned Video Generation

    Shenzhen Loop Area Institute, Shenzhen, China. · Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China. · The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.

  17. A Reinforcement Learning Framework for Safety-Aware Haptic Shared Control in Surgical Robotics

    Oct 11, 2026Zihao Zhang, Karl Handwerker, Balint VargaRobotic ControlHuman-Robot Collaboration

    Institute of Control Systems, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany

  18. Multi-modal Representation Fusion for Long-term Microsurgical Anastomosis Trajectory Anticipation

    Oct 10, 2026Yuxuan Liu, Yating Luo, Yunfei Luan +4Trajectory PredictionMultimodal Trajectory Prediction

  19. Observation-Referenced Tissue Deformation Forecasting with Tool-Driven and Residual Dynamics

    Oct 9, 2026Tom Olesch, Nan Xiao, Xiongye Xiao +2Deformable Object SimulationSurgical Robotics

    Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville · Department of Surgery, University of Tennessee Medical Center, Knoxville

  20. EndoRSI: Physical-Evidence-Driven Recursive Improvement of Endoscopic Robot Policies

    Oct 9, 2026Chi Kit Ng, Yidong Zhang, Tianchun Wu +4Robotic EndoscopyRobot Policy Adaptation

    Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China · Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

  21. Multimodal Image-based Robotic Assistance and Guidance Environment (MIRAGE): A Novel Unified Framework for Surgical Navigation and Visualization

    Oct 8, 2026Ehsan Nasiri, Yi Zheng, Michael A. Kokko +4AR in SurgerySurgical Robotics

    Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth 15 Thayer Dr, Hanover, NH, USA

  22. Selectively Actuated Fiberbots for High-precision Minimally Invasive Surgery

    Oct 8, 2026Jinshi Zhao, Libaihe Tian, Alex Ranne +9RoboticsSurgical Robotics

    Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, UK · Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, UK · Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, UK +1

  23. Image-Based Path-Planning for Navigation of Soft-Growing Robots in the Spinal Sub-Arachnoid Space

    Oct 8, 2026George Dimas, Panagiotis G. Kalozoumis, Panagiotis Vartholomeos +1Robot Motion PlanningSafe Robot Navigation

    Dept. of Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics, School of Science, University of Thessaly, Lamia, Greece

  24. Hall Effect-Based Tactile Force Detection Sensor for Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery

    Oct 7, 2026Charles DeLorey, Michael Brockdorff, Adam Metcalf +3Tactile SensingRobotic Tactile Sensing

    STORM Lab, School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

  25. ProCut: Probabilistic Cutting Topology for Autonomous Electrosurgical Tissue Dissection

    Oct 5, 2026Xiao Liang, Fei Liu, Florian Richter +2Differentiable PhysicsSurgical Robotics

  26. STC-MPM: Coupled Deformation, Progressive Damage, and Cut Formation in Soft-Tissue Cutting

    Oct 5, 2026Kewei Zuo, Jiahe Chen, Ziao Kuang +2Material Point MethodMaterials Science

    Department of Precision Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

  27. DASH: A da Vinci Adapter for Serial-link and Humanoid Robots as an Accessible Platform for Surgical Robotics Research

    Oct 5, 2026Sara Wickenhiser, Junrong Zhou, Zekai Liang +3Surgical RoboticsHealthcare Robotics

    Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA · Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA.

  28. Robust Surgical Robotic Instrument Tracking via Sequential Multi-Cue Fusion and Sim-to-Real Self-Training

    Oct 4, 2026Hanyang Hu, Zekai Liang, Florian Richter +1Self-TrainingSim-to-Real Transfer

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA.

  29. Ex vivo breach detection using electrical conductivity during robotic pedicle drilling in the spine

    Oct 1, 2026Jorge Andrés Pérez Velásquez, François Teyssere, Thibault Chandanson +2Surgical Robotics

    ISIR, Sorbonne Université, CNRS UMR 7222, Inserm U1150, Place de Jussieu, Paris, 75005, France. · SpineGuard SA, 10 cours Louis Lumière, Vincennes, 94300, France. · LIB, Sorbonne Université, CNRS UMR 7371, Inserm U1146, 15 rue de l’Ecole de Médecine, Paris, 75006, France.

  30. RoboAssist: Interactive Human-Humanoid Planning for Long-Horizon Surgical Assistance

    Sep 30, 2026Jingwei Jia, Keyu Zhou, Jiewei Wang +7Robot SafetyHuman-Robot Collaboration

    Hangzhou Dianzi University, China. · Zhejiang University, China. · New York University, USA. +1