Medtronic Unveils Touch Surgery Aide, a Real-Time AI Computing Platform for Its Hugo Robot

Medtronic said on July 21 that it will present Touch Surgery Aide, a computing platform designed to run artificial intelligence applications on live surgical video in the operating room, at the Society of Robotic Surgery 2026 annual meeting in Florida, July 23-26, according to the company's announcement. The company described the presentation as "an early look" at the platform.

The first application to run on it, called Instrument Exit Point, has FDA clearance for use with Medtronic's Hugo robotic-assisted surgery system.

What the first application does

The FDA cleared Instrument Exit Point on Touch Surgery Aide on June 4, 2026, under 510(k) number K253984, according to the agency's decision letter and summary. The applicant was Covidien LLC, and the device is regulated as a Class II endoscope accessory.

The FDA summary describes the application as "an AI-enabled device software function" indicated for use during robotic-assisted surgery with Hugo to detect when supported surgical instruments leave the field of view. It notifies the surgeon when and where a supported instrument has left the view and shows its last-seen location on the Touch Surgery Aide monitor. Three Hugo instruments are supported: bipolar Maryland forceps, a bipolar fenestrated grasper and monopolar curved shears.

The summary states that the application does not expand, modify or replace Hugo's own indications for use. According to the summary, performance testing measured how accurately the software detected instrument exit and re-entry events and where it placed the last-seen indicator, using datasets kept separate from training data, and met predefined acceptance criteria.

The platform

Medtronic said Touch Surgery Aide incorporates Nvidia's accelerated computing infrastructure, including its Holoscan, CUDA and TensorRT software, and combines computer vision and multimodal AI to process surgical video and procedural context in real time. The company said multiple AI applications can run at the same time during a live procedure, and that it expects the platform to support more real-time AI applications and connect with other Medtronic technologies in the operating room over time. It is designed to support expansion into laparoscopic surgery, the company said.

Touch Surgery Aide extends Medtronic's existing Touch Surgery ecosystem, which the company said is used in more than 1,500 operating rooms worldwide for planning, training, remote proctoring and post-operative review.

"Real-time AI marks a new frontier for healthcare," Jim Peichel, Medtronic's chief technology officer, said in the release.

Hugo's U.S. status

Hugo received FDA clearance for urologic procedures in December 2025, and Medtronic announced 510(k) submissions in June 2026 to extend it to general and gynecologic surgery, the company said. As MedTech Dive reported, the Hugo clearance made Medtronic the first large medtech company to challenge Intuitive's lead in the U.S. robotic soft tissue surgery market.