Emerging surgical robotic technology: a progression toward microbots

Robot-assisted surgery has quickly expanded due to the increasing opportunities for minimally invasive surgery across surgical domains. As robotic surgery approaches a decade of commercial use, the market is diversifying and novel surgical modalities with new technology, decreased costs, and smaller size are becoming available. This chapter aims to highlight emerging surgical robotic technology with a special focus on the miniaturization of modalities toward construction of micro-scale surgical robots, termed “microbots”.