Buying guide
da Vinci (and Ion) vs Ottava in 2026
Comparing 2 humanoid robots across availability, pricing, capabilities, and verified deployments. Current as of 2026.
| Attribute | No image on file | No image on file |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Intuitive Surgical | Johnson & Johnson |
| Form factor | surgical | surgical |
| Maturity | production | pilot |
| Availability | internal-onlyenterprise | internal-onlyenterprise |
| Price | Not announced | Not announced |
| Capability claims | — | — |
| Brain | — | — |
| Verified deployments | 3 | 1United States |
| Privacy practices | — | — |
| Sources on file | 13 | 5 |
Editorial summaries
da Vinci (and Ion)
Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci is the gold-standard surgical robot and the verified-at-scale anchor of the category. Per Intuitive's SEC filings, 11,395 da Vinci systems and 1,041 Ion endoluminal systems are installed. The lineup spans da Vinci multi-port (X/Xi), the single-port SP, and the fifth-generation da Vinci 5 (FDA cleared March 2024, with force feedback), plus the Ion bronchoscopy robot (FDA 2019). It is teleoperated, a surgeon controls every motion, with shipped analytics AI; autonomous-suturing work exists only as research demos on da Vinci hardware, not as shipped product. It is enterprise B2B equipment sold to hospitals at multi-million-dollar per-system prices; there is no consumer price.
Ottava
J&J MedTech's Ottava is a soft-tissue general-surgery robotic platform with four arms integrated into the operating table, announced in 2020. It is pre-market: J&J submitted a De Novo request to the FDA in January 2026, and Ottava is not authorized to be marketed. DEPLOY classifies it research tier: J&J's corporate scale does not translate into verified surgical-robotics deployment, because the gating event (FDA clearance) has not occurred. By the framework, Ottava sits at the same research tier as far smaller pre-market entrants. There is no price; it is not sold.
Machine-readable: this page as markdown.