Robot model
Dexter
Distalmotion (founded 2012 in the Lausanne area of Switzerland as an EPFL spinout; private) makes Dexter, a hybrid laparoscopic surgical robot designed for…
- Manufacturer
- Distalmotion
- Form factor
- surgical
- Maturity
- pilot
- Lifecycle
- active
- Deployments
- 1
Overview
Distalmotion (founded 2012 in the Lausanne area of Switzerland as an EPFL spinout; private) makes Dexter, a hybrid laparoscopic surgical robot designed for cost-efficiency and operating-room integration that lets surgeons switch between robotic and manual laparoscopy within the same procedure. Dexter is a genuine master-controlled robotic manipulator that received its European CE mark in December 2020, with European market launch following in 2021, and then crossed the key US gating event with FDA De Novo marketing authorization in October 2024 for adult inguinal hernia repair, since expanded with two further US clearances covering cholecystectomy and gynecologic procedures including total benign hysterectomy. The company reports nearly 3,000 patients treated across Europe and the US, raised $150 million in November 2025 to accelerate US expansion, and positions Dexter for ambulatory surgical centers as a cost-efficiency play. The registry records it at commercial maturity, solidly past its gating events and in early US scale-up, with a teleoperated master-slave baseline and no shipped autonomy or AI-assist feature. One date-precision note: the CE mark is December 2020, while the 2021 figure sometimes cited refers to the European launch year. Exact installed-system and country counts are not verified for the private company, and the roughly 3,000-patients figure is company-sourced and plausible but not regulatory-audited.
Verified vs. claimed
- Maturity stage
- pilot(Small-scale deployment in controlled or trial conditions.)
- Verified deployments
- 1 deployment on file
- Sources on file
- 4 sources, view all
Key facts
Form factor
Autonomy level
CE mark
FDA De Novo authorization
Patients treated
Funding
Specs
Notes
Products
Form Factor
Fda clearance
Clearance body
Procedure types
Data & sources
Press releases
1
Web sources
3
4 sources backing this record.View all →
Availability and pricing
- Availability
- Not disclosed
- Price
- $500K to $1M (analyst estimate)as of 2025-01-01
- Units in field
- Not disclosed
- Sales model
- Not disclosed
- Lead time
- Not disclosed
Pricing
One-time purchase
$500,000 - $1,000,000 USDanalyst estimateas of 2025-01-01
Source: How Much is a Surgical Robot? (2025 Edition) – R2 Surgical
Price status: actual-sale-price = real published price at time of sale; manufacturer-target = vendor target, not yet realized; analyst-estimate = third-party projection, not a vendor figure; not-announced = no price on record.
Prices verified as of Jan 1, 2025
Deployments (1)
Dexter is a CE-marked robotic surgery system used for laparoscopic surgery in the European Union, having received its CE Mark in 2022.
Dexter on the deployment map
Where Dexter is verified operating. Explore the deployment map by place and type.
Recent activity
Every change to this record is dated, sourced, and independently verified where marked.
- Verified media addedVerifiedJun 5, 2026
Distalmotion Dexter robotic surgery system
- Record createdJun 3, 2026
Added to the verified registry
- Price point recorded: $500,000-$1,000,000Jan 1, 2025
Analyst estimate
- Deployment verifiedVerifiedJan 1, 2022
at European Union
Deployment-verified media (1)
Distalmotion's overview of its Dexter surgeon-controlled robotic surgery system. 'Empowering access to robotic surgery' is the maker's framing.
From deployment: European Union
Regulatory filings (2)
- K251197fda 510k · us_fdacleared
- fda_de_novofda de novo · us_fdacleared2024-10-01
Applicant: Distalmotion
Safety record
No incidents on record for Dexter.
Only active incidents are counted. Retracted incidents are excluded from this summary but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.
Sources (4)
Common questions
- What is Dexter?
- Distalmotion (founded 2012 in the Lausanne area of Switzerland as an EPFL spinout; private) makes Dexter, a hybrid laparoscopic surgical robot designed for cost-efficiency and operating-room integration that lets surgeons switch between robotic and manual laparoscopy within the same procedure. Dexter is a genuine master-controlled robotic manipulator that received its European CE mark in December 2020, with European market launch following in 2021, and then crossed the key US gating event with FDA De Novo marketing authorization in October 2024 for adult inguinal hernia repair, since expanded with two further US clearances covering cholecystectomy and gynecologic procedures including total benign hysterectomy. The company reports nearly 3,000 patients treated across Europe and the US, raised $150 million in November 2025 to accelerate US expansion, and positions Dexter for ambulatory surgical centers as a cost-efficiency play. The registry records it at commercial maturity, solidly past its gating events and in early US scale-up, with a teleoperated master-slave baseline and no shipped autonomy or AI-assist feature. One date-precision note: the CE mark is December 2020, while the 2021 figure sometimes cited refers to the European launch year. Exact installed-system and country counts are not verified for the private company, and the roughly 3,000-patients figure is company-sourced and plausible but not regulatory-audited.
- How much does Dexter cost?
- Dexter is listed at $500,000 to $1,000,000 on the DEPLOY registry. This is an analyst estimate, not an official price.
- Is Dexter actually deployed in the real world?
- Yes. Dexter is independently verified in real-world operation on the DEPLOY registry, confirmed at named deployment sites with primary sources: not a concept, render, or demo-only.
- Is Dexter autonomous or teleoperated?
- Not verified as fully autonomous. Dexter's capabilities on the DEPLOY registry are recorded as teleoperated-assisted, demonstrated-only, or vendor claims (Assists surgery), not independently confirmed to run without a human in the loop.
- Who makes Dexter?
- Dexter is made by Distalmotion, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 2012.
- Where is Dexter deployed?
- 1 verified deployment of Dexter is on the DEPLOY registry, including at European Union.
- Can you buy Dexter?
- Dexter is in pilot deployments with named customers and is not yet broadly for sale.
- Is Dexter FDA cleared?
- Dexter has 2 regulatory records on the DEPLOY registry: FDA 510(k) clearance (K251197), cleared; FDA De Novo authorization, cleared. See the Regulatory filings section for each agency source.
- What are alternatives to Dexter?
- On the DEPLOY registry, comparable surgical robots to Dexter include Toumai, da Vinci (and Ion), Epione, Hugo RAS.
- How does Dexter compare to Toumai?
- Dexter and Toumai (MicroPort MedBot · 8 deployments) are both surgical robots on the DEPLOY registry. Dexter has 1 verified deployment on record. Compare both records for specs, safety, deployments, and verified-vs-claimed autonomy.
- Is Dexter a top surgical?
- On DEPLOY's intelligence score, which blends verified deployments, safety, adoption, media, and IP signals, Dexter ranks in roughly the top 28% of surgical models tracked by the registry.
- What is Dexter's maturity stage?
- Dexter is at the pilot stage on the DEPLOY maturity ladder (research, prototype, pilot, commercial, production). Pilot stage means at least one named-customer trial deployment is verified.
- Is Dexter safe?
- Dexter has no incidents on record in the DEPLOY registry. This does not constitute a safety guarantee; it reflects the incidents DEPLOY has tracked and verified to date.
- What is the Distalmotion Dexter surgical robot?
- The Distalmotion Dexter is a soft tissue surgical robot that simplifies operations to make wristed robotics more accessible. It received FDA marketing authorization (De Novo) in October 2024. Dexter is designed to be the 'surgeon's robot' that provides the physician complete control of the procedure. Distalmotion is expanding indications in uro-gynecology.
Methodology: Verified · 4 sources (1 primary) · last reviewed 2026-07-12
Verification posture
Verified
High confidence
Review state
Stable
Last reviewed 2026-07-12
Maturity + lifecycle
Maturity stage: pilot
Lifecycle: active
Architectural position
Cohort: surgical
Sources by quality tier
- 3
- unclassified
- Unclassified source
- 1
- primary-company-ir
- Company IR disclosure
The framework is documented at /methodology. Corrections at /corrections. Reviewer: DEPLOY editorial team.
Methodology surface for Dexter.Recent coverage
Dexter in third-party press
Humanoid says KinetIQ Ascend reinforcement learning approaches human-level dexterity
Why you should combine robot dexterity with mechanical positioning for complex assembly operations
NVIDIA expands robotics hiring in China, opens roles in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen
Attention vs reality over time
Media mentions per month (area) against verified deployment events (dots). A press spike over a flat deployment line is the hype gap, drawn over time.
In the press
Recent coverage mentioning Dexter from third-party publications. Automatically surfaced; not part of the verified registry record.
Humanoid says KinetIQ Ascend reinforcement learning approaches human-level dexterity
Humanoid says its KinetIQ Ascend approach can reach 99.9% manipulation reliability at human speed and beyond for industrial tasks. The post Humanoid says KinetIQ Ascend…
Why you should combine robot dexterity with mechanical positioning for complex assembly operations
Experts are recognizing the importance of mechanical positioning and its impact on the machine’s mobility, range and speed. The post Why you should combine robot dexterity with…
NVIDIA expands robotics hiring in China, opens roles in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen
US chipmaker NVIDIA announced a major recruitment drive for its robotics team, with openings across four core areas of embodied AI, simulation, deployment, and solution…
PSYONIC Arms NVIDIA And ABB With Robots Dexterity Data
Physical AI, like robots and humanoids, has a data problem, and the industry has not agreed on who solves it. Robots can walk, see, and plan, yet they still fumble […] The post…
PSYONIC partners with ABB Robotics to apply human touch to robot dexterity
GoFa helps test PSYONIC’s Ability Hand for robotics, combining touch sensing, compliant design, and human-derived training data. Source: ABB Robotics ABB Robotics LLC today said…
Distalmotion receives FDA 510k clearance for additional gynecology indications for DEXTER
Distalmotion received FDA 510k clearance for sacrocolpopexy, sacrocervicopexy, sacrohysteropexy, and endometriosis resection for DEXTER, its fourth US clearance adding to…
5 robotic surgery trends to watch in 2026
MedTech Dive: Soft tissue robotic systems expanding into new specialties. Medtronic Hugo competition with Intuitive. Distalmotion Dexter gaining traction. ASC adoption growing.
Distalmotion Dexter robot cleared for gynecology indications by FDA
Distalmotion Dexter robotic surgery system cleared for sacrocolpopexy, sacrocervicopexy, sacrohysteropexy. Targeting ASC robotic gynecology programs.
Visual Language Models Train Robots to Read Human Emotions
This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. As robots advance in terms of dexterity and other physical capabilities , it…
Beyond Dexterity: Why Contact May Define the Next Era of Robotics
This article is brought to you by AGILINK . Throughout the exhibition hall at the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics (ICRA), in Vienna, one demonstration seemed to…
RLWRLD and the Race to Solve Dexterous AI🖖
Motion awareness, memory, touch, and real-world manipulation are becoming the next frontier for robotics foundation models.
Video Friday: AI Gives Robot Hands Humanlike Dexterity
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events…
Machine-readable surfaces
- Markdown mirror: /models/distalmotion-dexter.md
- JSON-LD: embedded in this page’s head
- REST API: /v1/models/93cb82fd-9fa8-40f5-931c-2d36a8689fb9
- Revision history: /models/distalmotion-dexter/history
- Data documentation: /data
- Query this programmatically: Deploy MCP
Reality vs attention
Dexter draws attention at the 66th percentile but verifies reality at the 52nd percentile among surgical robots. Hype Gap +13.2, 9th widest among surgical robots.
6-month trend
Analysis
Thin deployment record; scale validation still in progress.
Signal flags
Dimension breakdown
Verified signal
Attention (reach, not merit)
DEPLOY Intelligence scores are computed from verified registry data: confirmed deployments, disclosed funding rounds, regulatory filings, active job listings, video viewership, and press coverage. Confidence ratings reflect data availability. Scores update nightly.
DEPLOY Indices — verified vs claimed
Last computed: Jul 18, 2026