A wireless robot for networked laparoscopy.

State-of-the-art laparoscopes for minimally invasive abdominal surgery are encumbered by cabling for power, video, and light sources. Although these laparoscopes provide good image quality, they interfere with surgical instruments, occupy a trocar port, require an assistant in the operating room to control the scope, have a very limited field of view, and are expensive. MARVEL is a wireless Miniature Anchored Robotic Videoscope for Expedited Laparoscopy that addresses these limitations by providing an inexpensive in vivo wireless camera module (CM) that eliminates the surgical-tool bottleneck experienced by surgeons in current laparoscopic endoscopic single-site (LESS) procedures.