Virtual Incision Brand Guidelines: A Nebraska Spin-Out & the Miniature MIRA Robot

An engineer, a surgeon and a university.

Virtual Incision grew out of the University of Nebraska. The engineer Shane Farritor, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and the surgeon Dmitry Oleynikov, a professor of surgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, founded the company in 2006 after several years of robotics research for NASA and the U.S. Army, the Lincoln Journal Star reported in February 2019. Silicon Prairie News reported in 2011 that the venture began through a university alumnus who sat on the dean’s advisory board. The university says the founders had support from its technology-transfer offices, NUtech Ventures and UNeMed.

The two had worked together for years on miniature robots that could be inserted through a small incision in the abdomen, the university’s news service reported in 2015, and in 2014 the University of Nebraska system gave them its Innovation, Development and Engagement Award. The research behind the company was funded by NASA and the U.S. Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, the university said. Farritor became the company’s chief technology officer and Oleynikov its chief medical officer.

For years it was, in Farritor’s words to the Lincoln Journal Star, “a virtual company,” existing in its patents and prototypes rather than in an office. In November 2018 it moved its headquarters into the new Rise Building at Nebraska Innovation Campus in Lincoln, with a manufacturing area, a research laboratory, a mock operating room and offices. The university reported in January 2019 that the facility combined research and development, quality control, assembly and testing, and that the manufacturing space was where the company would produce its robots, cameras, consoles and surgical tools.

MIRA, on Earth and in orbit.

The company’s product is MIRA, which it describes as the world’s first miniaturized robotic-assisted surgery, or “miniRAS,” system. The name stands for Miniaturized In Vivo Robotic Assistant, CNN reported in 2024. The company says the device weighs about two pounds, arrives sterilized in a compact tray and is inserted through a single port with no draping or docking; a companion cart stages it, and the surgeon works from a console with hand controls and foot pedals. Its pitch, set out on its site, is that a small system can make every operating room “robot-ready” without a dedicated room.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted MIRA De Novo authorisation on 23 February 2024, according to the FDA’s device database; the company says the authorisation covers adults undergoing colectomy. On 25 August 2026 the company announced 510(k) clearance for benign hysterectomy procedures, and the FDA database dates that clearance to 20 August 2026. The company says MIRA is commercially available in the United States for colectomy, with gynaecology to follow later.

MIRA has also been to space. A version called spaceMIRA launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 on 30 January 2024 and reached the International Space Station on 1 February, CNN reported. That month surgeons in Lincoln operated it remotely on simulated tissue made of rubber bands, with a delay of about 0.85 seconds, and six surgeons ran tests in total. Farritor told CNN the space version was three inches shorter than the terrestrial one but had the same form and function. Michael Jobst, a colorectal surgeon who took part, told CNN he had by then performed 15 operations on patients with the terrestrial MIRA, which was still an investigational device not available for sale.

The company has kept working on remote surgery since. In November 2024 it announced a U.S. remote robotic-assisted surgery demonstration with Sovato, City of Hope and the University of Illinois Chicago, and in March 2025 it said it was exploring NVIDIA’s Isaac for Healthcare platform.

Robots made smaller.

Surgical robotics companies sell machines that most people will never see in use, so their public image is built from a small set of scenes. The commonest is the operating theatre itself: robot arms draped and angled over a table, a console set a few steps away, and a surgical team in scrubs around them. When the BBC reported a new British surgical robot in 2018, one of its pictures showed a surgeon steering a robot from a console.

The second scene is the surgeon’s own view. Many systems give the surgeon a 3D screen or viewer and hand controls, and company photographs often show a surgeon leaning into that viewer or working the controls, sometimes beside a screen showing the magnified view inside the body. Close-ups of instruments follow: slim shafts, small jaws and wristed tips that bend and turn, shown at a scale no visitor to a hospital would normally see.

Clean product renders do much of the remaining work. Arms, carts and consoles are shown against plain white or soft grey grounds, with a restrained palette of whites, greys and a single brand colour, so that the machine reads as precise and calm. Museums have started to collect the results; in 2023 the Science Museum in London put a surgical robot arm on show in its Engineers gallery.

The industry meets at its own congresses. In North America, the annual meeting of SAGES, the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons, is a regular venue for new systems; in Europe there is the annual congress of the EAES, the European Association for Endoscopic Surgery; and in London the Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics brings engineers and surgeons together. The companies in this guide range from established makers to closed ventures, and each guide sets out what can be checked about them.

It’s miniature. And that’s huge.

Virtual Incision remains a privately held company headquartered in Lincoln. It has been funded by venture investors over the years; the university reported in 2015 that one round was led by Bluestem Capital of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with PrairieGold Venture Partners among the existing investors. Leadership has changed as the company moved toward sales: John Murphy was chief executive in 2019, the university reported, and in June 2025 the company appointed Jim Alecxih as chief executive. Its site names Piet Hinoul as chief medical officer, and the company says it holds more than two hundred patents and patent applications.

The brand voice is built on small size. The site’s headline, “Making every operating room robot-ready,” and lines such as “It’s Miniature. And that’s huge.” set the tone, and the company contrasts MIRA with what it calls “mainframe” robotic systems. It presents the space flight under the heading “Space Age Technology.” Its stated values include “We continuously make and improve” and “We own our destiny,” and the product is described in three words: convenient, capable, compact.

For a design guide, Virtual Incision shows how a university spin-out can turn a single idea — making the robot small — into the whole voice of a brand. Compare Moon Surgical, a younger company also working to bring robotic surgery into more operating rooms, and Intuitive, the maker of the da Vinci systems. For this guide we use a deep teal, a slate and a soft white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Virtual Incision’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.