Robot collaborative assistance for suture procedures via minimally invasive surgery

Abstract

Surgical robotics has usually provided the handle of surgical tools by using teleoperated systems or the automation of certain surgical tasks. However, the final goal of this field has always consisted of allowing the surgeon to perform an intervention without additional human assistance (i.e. solosurgery). In this way, this paper is focused on the design and implementation of a semi-autonomous surgical robot capable of assisting the surgeon during a suture procedure on a Hand Assisted Laparoscopic Surgery (HALS) scenario. The methodology proposed is based on a dispatcher system which manages the actuations of the robot depending on the recognized gestures of the surgeon’s tool. The performance of the whole architecture has been tested by means of in vitro trials.