Laparoscopic versus robotic radical prostatectomy

摘要

The term 'robot' comes from the Czech word 'robota'. Generally translated as 'forced labor', the term was first used in 1920 by Karel Capek in his play RUR: Rossums Universal Robots. Davies defined a surgical robot as "a powered computer-controlled manipulator with artificial sensing that can be reprogrammed to move and position tools to carry out a range of surgical tasks."1 This definition distinguishes use of a surgical robot from computer-assisted surgery. For instance, high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) machines are surgical robots according to this definition.