**1. Introduction**

Our group has a long-standing interest in catheter robotics. This began with the initial launch of Hansen robotic platform for left atrial ablation then followed the evolution of the Hansen system for peripheral interventions [1, 2]. These early studies clearly demonstrated the feasibility of navigating inside the vascular system safely and effectively and outlined some of the future directions for robotic catheter evolution: integrating into imaging, remote control, fluoro-less navigation using electromagnetic fields and autonomous movement [3]. The development of endovascular robotic catheters was seriously interrupted, when Hansen was acquired Auris, who recognized the importance of being able to navigate robotically through long thin tubes, in their case, bronchi. One real challenge of these hightech start-up companies is the prodigious amount of capital required to develop these technologies. The Auris endobronchial navigation platform (Monarch, Auris Health Inc., Redwood, CA, USA) recently acquired by Johnson & Johnson (New Brunswick, NJ, USA) for 4 billion dollars emphasizes the promise and value which this technology can bring to the clinical area. Currently the only endovascular robot available is from Corindus (Corindus, Siemens-Healthineers Company, Waltham, MA, USA). This will therefore be extensively described in the manuscript. Corindus was recently acquired by Siemens (Siemens-Healthineers, Erlangen, Germany), heralding the real possibility that "preflight" of a robot integrated into a fused image may at last move from fantasy to reality.
