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Gumbs et al. Mini-invasive Surg 2020;4:90 Mini-invasive Surgery
DOI: 10.20517/2574-1225.2020.110

Editorial Open Access

Searching for a better definition of robotic surgery:
is it really different from laparoscopy?

Andrew A. Gumbs, Belinda De Simone, Elie Chouillard

Departement de Chirurgie Digestive, Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal de Poissy/Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Poissy 78300,
France.
Correspondence to: Prof. Andrew A. Gumbs, Departement de Chirurgie Viscérale et Digestive, Centre Hospitalier de POISSY-
SAINT GERMAIN, 10 rue du Champ Gaillard, Poissy 78300, France. E-mail: aagumbs@gmail.com
How to cite this article: Gumbs AA, De Simone B, Chouillard E. Searching for a better definition of robotic surgery: is it really
different from laparoscopy? Mini-invasive Surg 2020;4:90. http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2574-1225.2020.110
Received: 26 Nov 2020 Accepted: 30 Nov 2020 Published: 10 Dec 2020

Academic Editor: Giulio Belli Copy Editor: Cai-Hong Wang Production Editor: Jing Yu

Although both laparoscopic surgery and robotic surgery are minimally invasive techniques, the hope
for robotic surgery is that it represents an evolution of minimally invasive technology that will improve
the precision of surgeons movements in ever increasingly narrow and small anatomic spaces. It is widely
believed that robotic technology works as a filter for the involuntary tremors of the surgeon, theoretically
resulting in a minimization of involuntary inaccuracies, thus helping surgeons to further perfect their art.
That robotic surgery is a natural evolution of minimally invasive surgery is not questioned; however, the
veritable explosion of robotic enhancement begs the questions: Are all surgical robots created equal? What
should be considered robotic surgery and what should be considered robot-assisted?

The meaning of the words robot and robotics are surprisingly complex. The etymology of robot comes
from the Slavic word “robot” that means servitude, servant, and disturbingly slave. It first appeared in
print in 1920 in the play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) about a factory that makes androids and was
[1]
written by the Czech writer Karel Čapek . Isaac Asimov is then credited with coining the term robotics
[2]
in a short story tilted “Liar!” that was first published in 1941 . Since then, the term robot has taken on a
number of meanings with its main definition being a machine or device that does the work of a human
either autonomously or under computer control.

Robotics has become a field of engineering that utilizes computer science to design, manufacture, operate,
and utilize robots. It has become an interdisciplinary field that uses aspects of electronic, computer,
mechanical, and information engineering. The field of robotics has innumerable potential applications,

© The Author(s) 2020. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long
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