For the second time in a row, the ForNeRo research consortium has received an excellence rating from the Bavarian Transformation and Research Foundation. On October 15, 2025, independent experts reviewed the progress of the second funding year and thereby confirmed the consortium’s current course.

ForNeRo brings together research institutions, clinics, and industry partners from Bavaria with the aim of better integrating robotic assistance systems into everyday surgical practice. Despite their advantages, robotic systems in the operating room are still limited to a few specialized cases today – limited integration into existing workflows and high setup effort restrict their broader use. The consortium is therefore developing methods intended to fundamentally improve this process.

As part of the Hightech Agenda Bavaria, the Bavarian Transformation and Research Foundation specifically supports collaborative projects that bring together science and industry. Within this framework, it has been supporting ForNeRo since the first project year and regularly has the project’s progress evaluated by independent reviewers.

The evaluation took place in the experimental operating rooms specially set up for ForNeRo, where live demonstrations illustrated the current development status of the systems. The reviewers were convinced and once again awarded the highest rating, “Excellent.” With this result, the consortium confirms its course of gradually transferring robotic surgery into routine clinical practice.

Title image: Source: Jakob Reinhardt/ TUM