Its predecessor, AESOP, was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration in 1994 to assist surgeons in minimally invasive surgery.
The other two robotic arms mimicked the surgeon's movements to make precise incisions and extractions.
This was partially done to try to end the litigation between the companies, but also to combine their efforts in developing robotic surgical systems to increase the effectiveness of such technology.
Soon after merging, the ZEUS was phased out in favor of Intuitive Surgical's Da Vinci system.
[6] The ZEUS was designed for minimally invasive microsurgery procedures, such as beating heart surgery and endoscopic coronary artery bypass grafting (E-CABGTM).
The system was also used to initiate more complex procedures, like a mitral valve surgery IDE study.