“…As shown in Fig. 1 Notable examples are in the field of soft robotics, with new materials (electroactive polymers [28], metamaterials [29] and hydrogels [30]), new structures (steerable needles [31], continuum robots [32], granular jamming [33], [34]), new surgical phantoms [35], [36], and new sensors and sensing schemes (Fibre-Bragg-Grating-based shape sensing [37], bioimpedance tomography [38], fibre-based Optical Coherence Tomography [39], Optical Doppler Flowmetry [40]), and miniaturization, a field that is still in its infancy, but that holds significant promise for the future of patient-specific, non-invasive medicine. As an example, research teams at the Hamlyn Center (Imperial College), supported by the EPSRC's Microengineering Facility for Robotics, are developing a new class of tethered and untethered microscale (grippers [41], micro-tweezers [42], microbots [43]) and nanoscale [44] robots that enable autonomous and remote manipulation of cells and drugs.…”