Extending his experience in space robotics to the medical field, he continued his research with the design of innovative medical devices inspired by smart solutions in nature, sponsored by a personal grant from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Having received a number of prices and awards, his research was rewarded in 2012 with a prestigious Dutch VICI research grant on the development of advanced snake-like instrumentation for endo-nasal skull base surgery. In 2019 Breedveld became one of the chairs of Dutch Soft Robotics: a large national research programme of the Dutch 4TU Federation aimed at using clever bio-inspired solutions for the development of medical and agricultural soft robotic systems. From 2014-2020 Breedveld was chair of the Board of Examiners of the Faculty Mechanical, Maritime & Materials Engineering (3mE).