Planning automatic surgical tasks for a robot assistant

Abstract

One of the main goals of surgical robotics has always relied on developing a robotized platform to allow the surgeon make an intervention alone, which is also known as the co-worker concept. These robotic systems have evolved over the last years depending on their tasks and interfaces with the surgeon. This evolution led to the teleoperated systems, which have the main drawbacks of a high complexity and economic costs.Many researchers have focused their efforts in minimizing these problems by automating certain actuations on the surgical environment. In this way, this chapter focuses on the design and implementation of a robotic surgical motion controller, which has been designed for performing autonomous tasks to assist the surgeon with an additional instrument. For this purpose, a hierarchical architecture has been implemented which includes an auto-guide velocity planner connected to a force controller. The first one, a trajectory planner based on a behavior approach, is devoted to find a collision-free trajectory of the surgical instrument tip held by the robot, with the final aim of reaching a target location inside of the abdominal cavity. However, the surgical tasks may also require pressing the tissue or stretching the thread for needle suturing. In this way, the force controller grants the exertion of these required forces. The performance of both, the trajectory planner and the force controller, have been tested by means of in vitro trials.