Medical Technologies and Challenges of Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Intervention and Diagnostics

Emerging paradigms furthering the reach of medical technology into human anatomy present unique modeling, control, and sensing problems. This review provides a brief history of medical robotics, leading to the current trend of minimally invasive intervention and diagnostics in confined spaces. We discuss robotics for natural orifice and single-port access surgery, capsule and magnetically actuated robotics, and microrobotics, with the aim of elucidating the state of the art. We also discuss works on modeling, sensing, and control of mechanical architectures of robots for natural orifice and single-port access surgery, followed by works on magnetic actuation, sensing, and localization for capsule robotics and microrobotics. Finally, we present challenges and open problems in each of these areas.