Towards an Autonomous Robot-Assistant for Laparoscopy Using Exteroceptive Sensors: Feasibility Study and Implementation

A new autonomous camera-holder robotic system for Laparoscopic Surgery (LS) is presented in this paper. In the proposed system, a 7-DoF collaborative robot holds and moves the laparoscope, or surgical camera, so that it permanently points towards the instruments' tips. A motion capture (MoCap)...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE robotics and automation letters 2021-10, Vol.6 (4), p.6473-6480
Main Authors: Sandoval, Juan, Laribi, med amine, Faure, Jean-Pierre, Breque, Cyril, Richer, Jean-Pierre, Zeghloul, Said
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bioengineering
Cameras
Collaboration
collaborative robot
Computer Science
Contact force
Control theory
Data exchange
Feasibility studies
human-robot interaction
Imaging
Instruments
Laparoscopes
Life Sciences
Medical equipment
Medical robot
Motion capture
Motion control
redundant robot
Robot dynamics
Robot kinematics
Robot vision systems
Robotic surgery
Robotics
Robots
Surgeons
Surgical instruments
Task analysis
Training
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Summary:A new autonomous camera-holder robotic system for Laparoscopic Surgery (LS) is presented in this paper. In the proposed system, a 7-DoF collaborative robot holds and moves the laparoscope, or surgical camera, so that it permanently points towards the instruments' tips. A motion capture (MoCap) system, tracking online the surgical instruments, provides the robot's controller with instrument's motion data. Unlike the existing systems, this paper proposes an autonomous robot-assistant, freeing up surgeons from the laparoscope motion control, fully responding to the surgical community requirements. Moreover, a fully compliance control law is implemented. In task-space, it is suitable for smoothing robot movements and reducing the contact forces generated at the trocar. Null-space is also exploited through a compliance control law restricting the elbow's robot motion into a desired range, defined to avoid undesired collisions with the rest of the medical equipment. Robot Operating System (ROS) framework has been used to establish the communication between the robot and MoCap system, using the UDP protocol for data exchange. Training tasks, such as suturing training, have been performed by surgeons to validate the usefulness of the proposed platform, proving that a collaborative robot can autonomously comply with camera-holder assistant tasks.
ISSN:2377-3766
2377-3766
DOI:10.1109/LRA.2021.3094644