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ABSTRACT In recent years, advances in robotics, materials science, artificial intelligence, and medical imaging have collectively accelerated the development of medical robotics, positioning it as a key frontier in modern healthcare. However, conventional medical instruments remain difficult to miniaturize and to maneuver effectively within constrained internal environments, limiting their applicability in high‐precision interventions. To overcome these challenges, small‐scale magnetic soft robots (SMSRs) have emerged as one of the most promising yet technically demanding research directions. Broadly classified into untethered and tethered systems, SMSRs exhibit significant potential for clinical translation. This review mainly focuses on these two representative categories, providing a comparative analysis of their technological developments, key milestones, existing challenges and future perspectives across five stages: basic performance testing, artificial model validation, ex vivo organ experiments, in vivo animal studies, and clinical translation, aiming to provide a systematic synthesis to guide future research and accelerate the clinical adoption of SMSRs.
Ke et al. (Sat,) studied this question.