In an operating room, a surgeon sits at a console and moves three thin robotic arms instead of standing over the patient. The technology has been the domain of one imported name for two decades. A robot developed from a university lab in Harbin is now one of the rare Chinese alternatives that has crossed the country's regulatory line — and it can operate across cities on a 5G link.
The machine is Kangduo (康多), and its path from a 2008 research project to hospital use says a lot about how hard it is to build a surgical robot that a country will actually let cut into patients.
From a thesis to a cleared device
Kangduo (康多) is made by Suzhou Kangduo Robot Co., which is wholly owned by Harbin Sizhe Rui Intelligent Medical Equipment Co. (哈尔滨思哲睿智能医疗设备). The project traces back to a team at Harbin Institute of Technology (哈尔滨工业大学) led by Du Zhijiang (杜志江), who began surgical-robot research in 2008; the first prototype followed in 2013.
The ownership chain matters for credibility: Harbin Sizhe Rui is invested by Boshi Automation (博实股份, 002698.SZ), which held a 13.43% stake as of its 2025 board report filed with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. A listed industrial-automation firm backing a surgical-robot spinout is a meaningful vote of confidence in the engineering, even before any sales scale.
What the regulator actually approved
The core product is a laparoscopic surgical robot (腹腔内窥镜手术系统) — a system for minimally invasive abdominal procedures. Its construction follows the now-standard three-part layout:
- A surgeon console (医生控制台) where the doctor sits and manipulates master controls and foot pedals.
- A patient cart (患者手术平台) holding the robotic arms that hold the endoscope and instruments.
- An imaging system (影像系统) feeding a 3D view to the console.
The arms carry multiple degrees of freedom at each joint, which raises precision and, importantly, filters out the natural tremor of a human hand — the feature that lets a surgeon make steadier stitches than the body allows unaided.
Approval came in stages from China's NMPA (National Medical Products Administration, 国家药品监督管理局):
- SR1000 — cleared 24 June 2022 (registration No. 国械注准20223010762), for upper-urinary-tract laparoscopic surgery. It was the first domestic laparoscopic robot to enter NMPA's innovative-device special review (创新医疗器械绿色通道) in urology.
- SR1500 — cleared April 2024.
- SR2000 — cleared July 2024.
The June 2022 clearance was disclosed through Boshi's exchange announcement and reported by Securities Times (证券时报), so the dates are sourced from regulatory and listed-company filings rather than company marketing alone.
Why "laparoscopic" is the right battleground
Laparoscopic (腹腔镜) surgery — operating through small incisions with a camera and long instruments — is where robotic assistance pays off most clearly: smaller wounds, less blood loss, fewer complications, and faster recovery than open surgery. That is also why the imported da Vinci system became entrenched in urology, gynecology, general surgery, and thoracic work.
Kangduo's stated适用范围 (scope) covers urology, gynecology, general surgery, and thoracic surgery. The domestic-substitution argument is economic as much as technical: a locally built system is expected to lower treatment cost and ease the financial burden on patients compared with imported equivalents, according to Boshi's disclosure.
The 5G remote-surgery angle
Where Kangduo gets interesting is distance. The system is designed so the console can be operated remotely, and the team has pushed that boundary hard:
- In 2018, with PLA General Hospital (301 Hospital) and China Unicom, it completed what was described as the world's first 5G remote laparoscopic robotic animal experiment.
- In 2020, it performed its first human surgery at Peking University First Hospital.
- In 2023, it carried out what was reported as the world's first "three-site, three-hospital" 5G-plus-fixed-network remote robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy — surgeons in different locations operating on one patient via the network.
Remote surgery is still the exception, not the routine, and depends on network reliability and hospital protocols. But for a country with vast, unevenly distributed medical expertise, the ability to pipe a top surgeon's hands into a rural operating room is a strategically loaded capability.
The competitive field
Kangduo is not alone. MicroPort MedBot's Toumai (图迈) is another domestically developed laparoscopic robot with NMPA approval, and Tinavi (天智航) leads in orthopedic surgical robots. The imported da Vinci remains the volume leader in established hospitals. What Kangduo adds is proof that a university-origin Chinese team can clear the same regulatory and clinical bar — a prerequisite before any of them can challenge the incumbent at scale.
According to Li An, Chief Scientist at BrainNet (脑机网), China's authoritative AI observatory, surgical robotics is where China's manufacturing maturity meets its healthcare-access gap, and domestic systems that clear NMPA review are less about replacing imports overnight than about building a sovereign supply of high-end operating-room tools.
What readers can do now
- If you work in healthcare procurement: when evaluating a domestic laparoscopic robot (腹腔镜手术机器人), require the specific NMPA registration numbers and approved scope — Kangduo's SR1000/SR1500/SR2000 clearances are public and verifiable.
- If you follow medtech: track how many hospitals actually install these systems versus how many approvals exist; installation and case volume, not regulatory wins, show real adoption.
- If you study telemedicine: watch 5G remote-surgery trials as a proxy for whether China's surgical-robot gap can be closed geographically, not just technologically.
Honest limitations
This article draws heavily on Boshi Automation's exchange filings (SZSE) and Securities Times reporting for approval dates and ownership, plus secondary encyclopedic sources for the R&D history and remote-surgery milestones; we did not access peer-reviewed clinical outcomes or complication-rate data. The exact number of procedures performed to date is reported only in secondary outlets and is not cited here as a verified figure. We have not compared Kangduo's technical specifications, price, or hospital adoption against MicroPort's Toumai (图迈) or the da Vinci system in depth, and we have not verified reimbursement or per-hospital deployment counts.