The Da Vinci system offers several singular advantages:

1. A wrist is provided at the end of the laparoscopic instruments. This allows 6 degrees of freedom plus grip, so that the movements of the arm and wrist outside the patient are faithfully reproduced inside the abdomen.

2. A telescope with two vision channels is used. This provides a stereoscopic view of the operative field, providing a high resolution three dimensional image to the surgeon.

3. Magnification of up the 10 times can be achieved by advancing the telescope up very close to the surgical site.

4. A scaling function reduces hand and wrist movements by a factor of 2 which allows very fine movements.

5. Motion tremor is filtered out by the robot to allow precise tremor free movements.

6. The surgeon controls the movement of the camera.
Figure 3.

The disadvantages of the Da Vinci system are:

1 No sensory feedback. With experience however the surgeon compensates for this by instinctively watching tissue response to movement.

2 Significant cost with a high initial capital cost, and significant maintenance and disposable costs.