Contents I. Introduction
The developments of medical robotics in the past decades have contributed much to the field of clinical medicine. Medical robots fundamentally couple information [including patient-specific information (e.g., medical images and lab test results) and general information (e.g., anatomic atlases, statistics, and rules)] to physical action to significantly enhance humans’ ability to perform various medical tasks, and the medical tasks are often surgical interventions, rehabilitation, or helping handicapped people in daily living for macroscale medical robotics [1]–[4]. The use of surgical robots (e.g., the well-known da Vinci robot system) brings enhanced dexterity, greater precision, reduced surgeon hand-tremor, intuitive ergonomic interfaces, and the ability to access surgical sites remotely with miniaturized instrumentation, significantly benefiting minimally invasive surgery [5], [6]. Robotic devices have been developed to restore the functionality of patients with movement disorders, such as upper limb rehabilitation [7] and lower limb assistance [8]. Wireless video capsule endoscopy enables inspection of the digestive system without discomfort or need for sedation and has the potential of encouraging patients to undergo gastrointestinal tract tests [9], which has revolutionized the diagnostic work-up in the field of small bowel diseases [10]. The emergence of soft robotics, which uses soft materials with biocompatibility and biomimicry, has opened possibilities for novel biomedical applications in which a soft interaction with a patient is preferred [11], [12]. Hand-held robots, which are totally ungrounded and manipulated by surgeons in free space, provide specific functions to assist the surgeon in accomplishing tasks that are otherwise challenging with manual manipulation [13]. These achievements in macroscale medical robotics undeniably show the impacts of robotics on clinical medicine and healthcare [14], [15].
