( CNN ) -- Every day , we happily entrust more of our lives to automated machines at home and in our cities . But you could be forgiven for blanching at the prospect of a four-armed robot bearing over you , scalpel glinting . But fear not , a human , and a highly-trained one at that , is at the controls of the da Vinci robotic surgical system . `` I think it 's very important to explain robotic surgery , '' says David Rosa from da Vinci creators , Intuitive Surgical . `` The robot does n't do anything on its own . Every movement , all of its controls are controlled by a surgeon who sits at a console . '' The company 's tele-operated robots have performed more than 1.5 million operations from abdominal general surgery and gynaecology procedures to thoracic and lung operations . Interactive : Future of printing is 3-D. `` The benefit is minimally invasive surgery . The patient will feel less pain , need less time to recover , generally ( lose ) less blood depending on the operation . There 's just a raft , a whole host of benefits to the patient , '' Rosa said . Three components form the operating core of da Vinci : a patient cart -- which house the robotic arms , the surgeon console and a vision system that provides all the connections , which allow the console and instruments to communicate . Every movement of the surgeon 's hand is relayed to the four arms that control up to 50 different instruments , from the basics like scissors and needle drivers to more advanced instrumentation that include electrocautery and staplers . `` When you sit down at da Vinci console , it can do things that you can not do through other means , '' Rosa says . `` The robotic mechanisms and the 3-D vision that come along with it ( means ) you can manipulate tissue and perform surgery like no one else can . '' Read/Watch : Future of transport is self-driving cars . Rosa has been with the California-based company from its beginnings in the mid-1990s and has seen the da Vinci system develop from concept to the 10,000-component , $ 1 million-plus machine it is today . He still remembers the first time he saw it in action . `` I was nervous . There were ten engineers in the room . I remember a few people would joke about me in terms of my gloves being filled with sweat ... but we were all nervous in those days . We had a lot riding on the successful outcomes in terms of continuing to fund the company , '' Rosa said . But anxiety soon turned to optimism as the benefits to patients became clear . Consultant surgeon and chief medical adviser to Intuitive Surgical , Dr Myriam Curet has pioneered the use of the robot in hospitals . `` I spent several months developing a robotic procedure for operating on morbidly obese patients and then we did it on our first patient , '' Curet said . `` Things went extremely well , we were really , really pleased at what it allowed us to do that we could n't do with traditional methods . '' That said , the system is not without its detractors . Dr Martin Makary -- a senior surgeon at the John Hopkins Medical Institute in Baltimore -- is concerned that many people are not aware of its limitations . `` The Achilles heel of robotic surgery is that the robot can not feel the tissue , so the surgeon can make an inadvertent injury to a major structure , and that is a unique problem with this kind of surgery , '' he said . `` I 'm not anti-robot , but for most of the operations where robotic surgery is used , there 's no benefit to the patient . More technology does n't necessarily mean better quality healthcare . '' However , since making their first sale in 1998 -- to German customers at the Leipzig Heart Center -- the company has sold more than 2,500 robots to hospitals all over the world and reported revenues in excess of $ 2 billion last year . As for the future , Rosa predicts that surgeons and their patients will be even further apart -- an idea that not so long ago would have seemed like a remote possibility . `` I can imagine being a surgeon in San Francisco and working on a patient in another state , even New York , '' Rosa says .
Da Vinci robotic surgery has performed more than 1.5 million operations since late 1990s . Score: 6 California-based company had turnover of $ 2 billion in 2012 and lead the robot surgery field .