Intelligent Medical Robotics: Advances in Perception, Autonomy, Diagnosis, Treatment and Human-Robot Collaboration

The integration of robotics and artificial intelligence is transforming modern healthcare, from high‑precision surgery to assistive care and hospital automation. Recent advances in computer vision, sensor fusion, and reinforcement learning have enabled robots to perform complex tasks in dynamic medical environments. However, challenges persist in real‑time safety, adaptive decision‑making under uncertainty, and intuitive human‑robot interaction. Bridging these gaps requires close collaboration between engineers, clinicians, and regulatory bodies.

This Research Topic aims to collect cutting‑edge contributions that advance the design, control, perception, and clinical deployment of intelligent medical robotic systems. We seek to address key problems such as: how to achieve systematic intelligent diagnosis and treatment by integrating robotic perception, clinical decision support, and patient‑specific adaptation; how to guarantee safety during autonomous subtasks; how to develop shared‑control strategies that respect surgeon or patient intent; and how to validate robotic solutions in real‑world clinical settings. By presenting state‑of‑the‑art methodologies, openly shared datasets, and reproducible pipelines, this collection will accelerate the translation of laboratory prototypes into cost‑effective, user‑friendly, and clinically validated tools. Ultimately, we aim to foster cross‑disciplinary dialogue and set a reference point for roboticists, AI researchers, clinicians, and healthcare policymakers.

We invite original research articles studies on topics including but not limited to:
• Medical and Biomedical Robotics;
• Biomechanics, Sensing and Bio-inspired Control in Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics;
• Robot‑assisted Diagnosis and Intervention;
• Control, Teleoperation with Haptic Feedback;
• Medical Signal and Image Processing;
• Human-System Interaction and Interface;
• Sensor Design, and Novel Sensing Systems;
• Vision System, Robotic Vision.

We strongly encourage submissions demonstrating real‑world testing, open datasets, or reproducible methodologies.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Clinical Trial
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Medical Robotics; Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics; Human-Robot Collaboration; AI-Assisted Diagnosis and Treatment; Clinical Autonomy and Perception; Robotic Control Systems; Sensor Fusion Technologies; Advanced Sensor Technologies

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.