In order to grasp the global research and development status in the field of MIS(minimally invasive surgical) robots comprehensively, the output trend, countries distribution, research frontier and hot spots of MIS robots was carried out in this paper based on the output of papers and patents. The results showed that both from paper and patent data, the outputs of MIS robots area increased enormously during 2011 to 2020 especially after 2015—2016. The country which published most papers and patents was United States, which kept leading scientific and technological achievements in the world. China ranked second in the number of papers and patents, but lag behind advanced countries in technology and influence.According to bibliometric indices, Italy, the UK and South Korea were also at the leading position in the world. In terms of institutional distribution, the published papers were mostly contributed by universities and research institutes, while the main body of technological innovation was enterprises. The highest output and most influential papers and patents were also contributed by American institutions. The high level academic papers and PCT patents were obtained to identify the research frontier and hot spots in the field of MIS robots. It was concluded that manipulator, control method and system, image processing were the focus both from papers and patents, while the theoretical research was paid more attention in technical paper data, especially the research on deep learning used in MIS robots which was few from patents.