Robotic Endoscopy: From Rigid Gastroscopes to ABB Labs

How robotic endoscopy grew from Kussmaul's rigid tube, fibre optic scopes and the PillCam to the Triton 1 colonoscopy robot, and where ABB robots fit in.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/9/20265 min read

Each year millions of people lie on their side while a doctor pushes a long flexible scope through the stomach or the colon. The job is physical, the colon loops and stretches, and a small flat polyp can hide behind a fold. Robotic endoscopy tries to make that work steadier and less tiring. This post follows the gut scope from the rigid metal tubes of the 1860s to fibre optics, flexible colonoscopes and swallowable cameras, then to the robotic colonoscopy system the FDA cleared in September 2026. The last part covers where ABB robots fit, which today is in the labs and factories around the procedure.

Doctor in green gown and cap holding an endoscope handle beside a patient on a bed, monitor showing the view
Doctor in green gown and cap holding an endoscope handle beside a patient on a bed, monitor showing the view

A doctor starts an upper endoscopy on a sedated patient lying on her side, with the camera view on the monitor. Photo: Samir / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How doctors first looked into the stomach and colon

The first look inside a living stomach came from a show act. In 1868 the German physician Adolf Kussmaul, working in Freiburg, watched a sword swallower and passed a straight metal tube down the man's throat into his stomach. Light was the problem, since doctors still relied on candles, mirrors and lamps. In 1932 Rudolf Schindler and the instrument maker Georg Wolf in Berlin built a semi-flexible gastroscope, with a rigid upper part and a bendable tip carrying a chain of small lenses. Instruments like the Benedict flexible operating gastroscope, made in New York by American Cystoscope Makers, spread the method in the 1930s.

Old gastroscope with metal shaft, rubber bulb and cables laid in an open wooden case in a museum display
Old gastroscope with metal shaft, rubber bulb and cables laid in an open wooden case in a museum display

A Benedict flexible operating gastroscope by American Cystoscope Makers in its wooden case, displayed with the date 1933. Photo: A7N8X / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Glass fibres made the scope truly flexible. In 1957 Basil Hirschowitz presented the first working fibre optic gastroscope in Colorado Springs. A bundle of thin coated glass fibres carried the image along a soft cable, so the scope could bend with the gut. The colon came next. In 1967 Overholt showed a practical fibre sigmoidoscope with a 50 cm shaft, Japanese teams reported instruments up to 120 cm long in 1969, and in 1970 doctors began reaching the caecum, the far end of the large bowel. In 1971 the German endoscopist Peter Deyhle published the first series of colonoscopies.

Black flexible endoscope coiled on a green background with its handle and light cable
Black flexible endoscope coiled on a green background with its handle and light cable

A modern flexible endoscope with its control handle and long insertion tube. Photo: Kalumet / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Later engineers tried leaving the cable out. Israeli engineer Gavriel Iddan and gastroenterologist Eitan Scapa first worked on a camera pill in the early 1980s, and the first capsule was swallowed in 1997 after a low power CMOS sensor made the design possible. In 2001 the US FDA cleared the first capsule endoscope from Iddan's company, Given Imaging, later sold as PillCam. Medtronic took over the system in 2014 through Covidien. A capsule takes thousands of pictures on its way through the gut, but it drifts with peristalsis. It cannot be steered, and it cannot take a biopsy or remove a polyp.

Small beige capsule with a clear dome and electronics at one end lying above a ruler in millimetres
Small beige capsule with a clear dome and electronics at one end lying above a ruler in millimetres

A capsule endoscope, a swallowable camera pill, next to a millimetre scale. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Robotic endoscopy today and the Triton 1 clearance

The biggest recent step came on 16 September 2026, when Neptune Medical announced FDA 510(k) clearance for its Triton 1 robotic endoscopy system. The clearance covers diagnostic and therapeutic work across the colon, from screening and surveillance colonoscopy to endoscopic mucosal resection and endoscopic submucosal dissection, where a doctor peels a flat lesion off the bowel wall. Neptune says an unstable scope leads to missed views and missed adenomas, and that the robot gives the endoscopist more stability and control. Its chairman is Fred Moll, the robotic surgery pioneer who also co-founded Auris Health, known for the robots in our robotic bronchoscopy post.

Bright hospital ward with several patient trolleys with blue mattresses and a white reception desk
Bright hospital ward with several patient trolleys with blue mattresses and a white reception desk

Patient beds in the endoscopy unit of a hospital in Saudi Arabia, 2026. Photo: Yazan.shawahneh / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

The clearance followed CARE I, a 50 patient first in human study whose results came out in May 2026. Neptune reported that the study met its main endpoints with no adverse events and an adenoma detection rate of 54.2 percent, against a common benchmark of 35 percent. These are company figures from an early study, and larger trials will show whether they hold. Olympus, an investor in Neptune, co-founded Swan EndoSurgical in 2025 to build an endoluminal robot for gut lesions and cancers, and it distributes robotic devices from EndoRobotics.

Clean procedure room with a hospital bed, a cart of endoscopy equipment and a monitor on an arm
Clean procedure room with a hospital bed, a cart of endoscopy equipment and a monitor on an arm

An endoscopy room with the patient trolley and the video tower that holds the processor, light source and monitor. Photo: Samir / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

ABB does not build endoscopy robots, and nothing suggests it plans to. Its robots show up later in the chain. Polyps and biopsies go to a pathology lab, and in July 2026 ABB Robotics and Roche Diagnostics announced a global collaboration on lab automation, starting with robots that handle pathology slides and mobile robots that carry samples between instruments. ABB has also shown a mobile YuMi concept that loads test tubes into a centrifuge, and GoFa CRB 15000 cobots working at lab benches, both aimed at the repetitive steps that keep lab staff busy.

Two white ABB robot arms on a lab bench between analysers with racks of sample tubes
Two white ABB robot arms on a lab bench between analysers with racks of sample tubes

ABB robot arms working between analysers in a clinical laboratory, shown with the ABB and Roche collaboration. Photo: ABB

Where robotic endoscopy goes next in clinics and factories

The next push is toward more treatment through the scope. Endoscopic submucosal dissection is slow and hard to learn, and a stable robotic platform with more dexterous tools could make it practical for more hospitals, which is the aim of Neptune, Swan EndoSurgical and EndoRobotics. Research groups are also testing capsules moved by external magnets, so a doctor could steer the camera instead of waiting for it to drift. For patients, the hope is that fewer lesions get missed and that more early cancers can be removed in one session without surgery.

Black and white abdominal X-ray with a small bright capsule in the bowel and thin sensor wires across it
Black and white abdominal X-ray with a small bright capsule in the bowel and thin sensor wires across it

An X-ray showing a capsule endoscope in the ascending colon and the wires of the sensor belt on the patient's abdomen. Photo: Hellerhoff / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

For ABB the realistic openings are in manufacturing. Endoscopes, robotic catheters and camera capsules are small, precise products assembled in clean rooms. At GE Healthcare's prototype line in Helsinki, a single-arm YuMi IRB 14050 already lays fine glue beads on small sensor parts, as covered in our post on medical device assembly. Cells like that could, as a possibility, glue lenses, route cables or test the bending sections of new scopes. Such programs are usually built and checked first in RobotStudio before the real cell is set up.

Small one armed ABB YuMi robot inside a compact work cell with guarding
Small one armed ABB YuMi robot inside a compact work cell with guarding

A single arm YuMi IRB 14050 in its cell on GE Healthcare's prototype line in Helsinki. Photo: ABB

A robotic platform adds cost to a procedure that is already high volume and tightly priced, so hospitals will want proof of better detection or faster treatment before they buy. Each team needs training, and the endoscopist still reads the screen and decides what to cut. Reusable scopes must be cleaned and disinfected after every patient, which gets harder as instruments gain motors and joints. Colonoscopy also competes with home stool tests and blood tests, though a positive result from either still sends the patient for a colonoscopy.

Dual arm white ABB robot on a mobile base placing sample tubes into a lab centrifuge
Dual arm white ABB robot on a mobile base placing sample tubes into a lab centrifuge

ABB's mobile YuMi concept loading test tubes into a centrifuge. Photo: ABB

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