Buying guide
da Vinci (and Ion) vs Hugo RAS 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 | Medtronic |
| Form factor | surgical | surgical |
| Maturity | production | commercial |
| Availability | internal-onlyenterprise | internal-onlyenterprise |
| Price | Not announced | Not announced |
| Capability claims | — | — |
| Brain | — | — |
| Verified deployments | 3 | 3 |
| Privacy practices | — | — |
| Sources on file | 13 | 14 |
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.
Hugo RAS
Medtronic's Hugo RAS is a modular, multi-port teleoperated robotic-assisted-surgery system and the main commercial competitor to Intuitive's da Vinci. It is CE-marked in Europe (urology and gynecology, October 2021) and US FDA-cleared for urology only (December 2025: prostatectomy, nephrectomy, cystectomy); US general-surgery and gynecology indications are planned but not yet cleared. It is teleoperated with no shipped intraoperative AI. Medtronic does not disclose a Hugo installed-base count, so DEPLOY records honest absence rather than an invented number. It is enterprise B2B equipment; there is no consumer price.
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