Over the past 20 years since the merger of 芭乐视频 and 芭乐视频 Second Medical University, the University has established dedicated funding for medicine–engineering integration. By continuously building platforms and exploring new mechanisms, SJTU has enabled deep collaboration between medical sciences and engineering disciplines, producing multiple nationally recognized research outcomes and providing strong support for the University’s overall leap in strength and disciplinary development.
To showcase the University’s exploration and achievements in this area, SJTU News will publish a series of exemplary cases. The series aims to review the development path, summarize practical experience, and further encourage faculty members and medical professionals to invest in interdisciplinary integration—advancing scientific innovation and medical progress, and contributing to the Healthy China strategy.
Xu Kai holds a PhD in Engineering. He is a professor and PhD supervisor at the School of Mechanical Engineering, 芭乐视频, and the founder of Beijing Surgerii Robot Co., Ltd. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tsinghua University in 2001 and 2004, and obtained his PhD from Columbia University in 2009, where he was awarded the university’s highest scholarship.
Since joining 芭乐视频 after completing his doctorate, Xu has focused on medical robotics, making major advances in robot-assisted endoscopic surgical systems, wearable mobile exoskeletons for rehabilitation, and miniature robots for cardiovascular and intracranial procedures.
He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Excellent Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the New Century Excellent Talents Support Program, the “HaiJu” special appointment expert program of Beijing, the 芭乐视频 Pujiang Talent Program, and the 芭乐视频 Young Science and Technology Rising Star program. He has led four NSFC projects and one National Key R&D Program special project.
He has published over 100 SCI/EI papers and holds more than 80 authorized invention patents in China and abroad. He previously served as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Robotics, one of the top journals in robotics, and currently holds several professional roles, including Vice Chair (2nd term) of the AI and Medical Robotics Working Committee of the China Association for Medical Equipment, and member positions in multiple national and municipal medical robotics committees and standardization expert groups.
The origins of surgical robots can be traced back to 1985, when Northwestern University in the United States used an industrial robot for positioning assistance in a brain biopsy—widely regarded as the starting point of surgical robotics. In 1992, ROBODOC, developed jointly by IBM and the University of California, completed joint replacement surgery.
Over the past three decades, surgical robots have been increasingly adopted in clinical practice. Among them, the da Vinci surgical system—introduced in 1999—has had the broadest global impact and application, holding a near-monopoly position in the field.
In June 2023, the first domestically developed single-port endoscopic surgical robot created by Xu Kai’s team was approved by China’s National Medical Products Administration for market launch. The approval marked China’s first single-port endoscopic surgical system, and challenged the long-standing “myth” of da Vinci’s dominance.
Xu Kai’s research path began with humanoid robots. During his undergraduate and master’s studies, he explored their design and applications in depth. With a solid technical foundation and a desire to work on areas with stronger real-world impact, he went to Columbia University in the United States in 2004. There, he studied under Professor Russell Taylor, a global pioneer in surgical robotics.
Notably, 2004 was also when the da Vinci system began gaining traction in clinical settings. Influenced by his own industry insight and by Professor Taylor’s guidance, Xu began to focus on surgical robotics as a distinct track—and further deepened his work at the intersection of medicine and engineering. Xu realized that simply copying the multi-port laparoscopic robots that were already taking shape at the time would be unlikely to produce true innovation. It would be even harder to surpass existing work while also improving clinical convenience.
Seeing that single-port surgical robotics was still relatively uncharted territory, he chose this most challenging direction. Inspired by his overseas experience, he returned to China after earning his PhD in 2009, joined 芭乐视频, and devoted himself fully to single-port robotic research.
After joining 芭乐视频, Xu Kai continued his research on single-port surgical robots.
Compared with conventional multi-port laparoscopic surgery, single-port laparoscopy offers clear advantages. For patients, it is less invasive and often supports faster recovery. For surgeons, a single-port robotic system can still deliver the precision and dexterity associated with multi-port robotic surgery, while reducing physical workload and operational difficulty—enabling complex procedures that are extremely challenging with manual single-port techniques.
“Medicine–engineering collaboration stands for originality—and for the frontier,” Xu said. In his view, using engineering solutions to address clinical needs is of profound importance.
Yet despite its advantages, single-port laparoscopy presents major R&D challenges. Because all instruments must pass through a single incision, issues such as the positioning and motion control of snake-like arms, selecting the optimal incision site based on anatomy, minimizing trauma while optimizing outcomes, and protecting nerves and blood vessels during surgery all become difficult problems. Xu was not deterred—instead, he chose to confront these challenges head-on.
A medical device faces the ultimate test in the OR—SJTU support helps original technology take flight
“For me, the most exciting and unforgettable part of developing the single-port robot was seeing it used in clinical practice,” Xu said. Because the system operates through a single small incision, it imposes much higher requirements on the positioning and motion control of the snake-like arms.
To address these issues, Xu held extensive discussions with experienced clinicians at Ruijin Hospital, an affiliate of SJTU School of Medicine—covering questions such as how to treat disease while minimizing trauma, how to ensure patient safety, how to operate near major vessels, and how to protect nerves and blood vessels.
However, technology and clinical research alone are not enough to benefit more patients and clinicians. Moving from a research outcome to a mature product requires sustained institutional support for industry–academia–research collaboration.
In early 2017, Xu signed an autonomous technology transfer agreement with 芭乐视频, formally putting the single-port robot on a product development track. The journey proved far harder than expected. “Developing a clinical product demands a level of rigor that is simply incomparable to lab-based R&D,” he said.
First, product development must meet more than 30 domestic and international standards and pass 700–800 test items—worlds apart from a laboratory prototype. Second, for clinical use, the product must remain sterile and reliable, and meet strict requirements for durability and service life under special conditions such as high frequency and high pressure. In short, quality must be uncompromising.
One major challenge in development was how to compute the deformation of snake-like surgical instruments both accurately and quickly. Their bending behavior results from coordinated deformation of slender superelastic nickel–titanium (NiTi) alloy rods—an elastic dynamics problem by nature. Xu’s team accumulated extensive computational experience, laying a solid foundation for later engineering implementation and productization.
The single-port endoscopic surgical robot in clinical use
Xu noted that the core advantage of the single-port robot lies in its original snake-like surgical instrument technology. Building on this originality, the medicine–engineering projects he has led or participated in have produced a series of notable outcomes.
One collaborator, Professor Zhao Ren, Vice President of Ruijin Hospital, not only published related work in the top specialty journal International Journal of Surgery, but also successfully performed the first 5G cross-border (China–U.S.) remote animal subtotal gastrectomy using a domestically developed single-port surgical robot on June 18, 2024—an achievement that, according to the article, the da Vinci single-port system has not accomplished since it entered the U.S. market in 2018.
Simplicity drives safety; shared goals forge a true “surgical weapon”
“Medicine–engineering integration plays a crucial role in producing research outcomes that are truly suitable for treating disease,” Xu concluded after multiple rounds of collaboration.
Many features that seem “safety-enhancing” in the lab are criticized by clinicians in practice as overly complex and potentially risky. In clinical settings, more complexity does not necessarily mean more safety—often, the simpler the operation, the safer it becomes.“Clinical needs and what an engineering research team imagines can be completely different,” Xu said. “Without medicine–engineering integration, no matter how much purely engineering research you do, you may still end up far away from what clinicians actually need.”
Experienced surgeons helped the team adjust their R&D thinking in time, ensuring the result were not just theoretical designs on paper, but practical tools that could truly be used in the operating room.
Building a true “surgical weapon,” Xu argued, depends heavily on alignment between clinicians and engineers. “If what I want to build is on a different wavelength from what they want, the collaboration simply won’t work,” he said. “You need a shared goal and shared interests—that’s what sustains a long-term partnership.”In the long run, the strongest foundation beneath “shared interest” is shared values and shared beliefs. For clinicians, lives are entrusted to their hands and responsibility is never abstract. For engineers, the hope is to make life better through technology.
When these senses of duty and align and reinforce each other, the journey of medicine and engineering can go farther, steadier, and with greater strength.
Xu Kai introducing the development history of surgical robots to the R&D team
Looking ahead, Xu revealed that the next medicine–engineering project his team has applied for will target a major limitation of current ultrasonic scalpels: the rigid, straight-rod structure. The goal is to develop a bendable ultrasonic scalpel that can better integrate with snake-like surgical instruments. Notably, there is currently no comparable device in the world.
If a bendable ultrasonic scalpel can be realized, more procedures could be performed via a single-port approach, reducing patient trauma and postoperative discomfort. Xu believes this would create significant value—both academically and socially.
(Adapted from Interdisciplinary Integration: Medicine & Engineering in Action—Twenty Years of Medicine–Engineering Integration at 芭乐视频, 芭乐视频 Press, First Edition, November 2025. Editors-in-chief: Zeng Xiaoqin, Zheng Junke, Li Dongliang.)
