
TOKYO -- Riverfield, a Japanese startup with origins at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has thrown down the gauntlet to Intuitive Surgical, the dominant player in the global surgical robot market.
Riverfield is looking to close in on Intuitive Surgical by putting Japan's first domestically made surgical robot on sale at half the price of the U.S. behemoth's da Vinci robotic surgery system, by 2020.