BACKGROUND: With the increasing presence of surgical robots minimally invasive surgery, there is a growing necessity of a versatile surgical system for deep and narrow workspaces. METHODS: We developed a versatile system for constrained workspaces called SmartArm. It has two industrial-type robotic arms with flexible tools attached to its distal tip, with a total of nine active degrees-of-freedom. The system has a control algorithm based on constrained optimization that allows the safe generation of task constraints and intuitive teleoperation. RESULTS: The SmartArm system is evaluated in a master-slave experiment in which a medically untrained user operates the robot to suture the dura mater membrane at the skull base of a realistic head phantom. Our results show that the user could accomplish the task proficiently, with speed and accuracy comparable to manual suturing by surgeons. Conclusions We demonstrated the integration and validation of the SmartArm.