Applied Dexterity is advancing the field of robotically-assisted surgery by creating a research surgical robot that fosters collaboration. Researchers can program and modify the RAVEN system, but it serves as a standard platform so that they can share their software and improvements. Applied Dexterity is designed to be an extensible, robust and programmable research tool to allow researchers in engineering, surgery and computer science to experiment, innovate and collaborate. The system is in use at 18 robotics research laboratories worldwide.