In no other medical discipline are precise movements as vital as in that of microsurgery. With robotic instruments, Medical Microinstruments aims to open up new possibilities in this field. The instruments are equipped with a record small articulated wrist, with a 3 mm outer diameter and forceps tips just 150 μm wide. Surgeons can operate these instruments while sitting at the operating table and observing the surgical procedure through a microscope. The system captures the surgeon’s hand movements and transposes a high-precision scaled-down motion to the micro instruments.

Robots have been a common sight in operating theaters for a number of years now. One of the currently best-known systems is da Vinci , a minimally invasive surgical system with a robotic arm that the surgeon can control from a console, which displays 3D HD images from the endoscope. The system translates the surgeon’s hand, wrist, and finger movements into the precise real-time movements of the associated EndoWrist instruments with seven degrees of freedom.