**1. Introduction**

In order to access the lesion, large incision on the healthy part of the patient, such as body surface is inevitable in the conventional (so-called open surgery) surgery. One of the modalities of the surgery which tries to minimize the incision on the healthy organ is laparoscopic surgery. The access to the lesion in the abdominal cavity is through several small incisions which sizes are about 5–10 mm. A long, slim camera and surgical devices are inserted from those incisions to the abdominal cavity. The surgeons perform surgical procedures such as incision, dissection, and suturing by manipulating those surgical devices watching a display of camera image. Compared with the conventional open surgery in which the large incision on the patient skin is made, the laparoscopic surgery provides the patients less postoperative pain and shorter hospital stay, which are the major benefits to the patients. On the other hand, the laparoscopic surgery demands high level technical skills of the surgeons because of several reasons. The surgeons lose direct vision, and only two-dimensional indirect vision through the display is available [1]. The indirect vision sometimes takes the sense of orientation and ability of the depth perception away from surgeons. All surgical devices are slim and long. The precise manipulation of the tip of those devices is very difficult. Also the mirror effect, the phenomenon in which the device in the patient body goes opposite direction to the handle outside the body, makes those manipulations more difficult [2]. The surgeons cannot directly touch the organs in the body. Palpation or feeling the applied force is not possible. Most of the surgical

devices are straight, do not have bending wrist. Those devices provide surgeon much less dexterity than the fingers and hands. In order to cope with those restrictions, long training time, experience, and practices are required for the laparoscopic surgeons. However, as those limitations are mainly technical issue, we believe the technologies can contribute to overcome those limitations. In this chapter, we introduce recent various technologies for laparoscopic surgery. First, we will overview the current worldwide surgical robotics. There is a dominant player in this field, da Vinci surgical system. However, several new robots by start-ups are in the pipeline. Then, we will introduce the robotics with the flexible endoscope as a new trend in the robotic surgery. They are also in the pipeline of the many companies, about to launch to the market. We think this field is promising as future minimally invasive surgery. After that, the technologies in the navigation and training are described.
