Towards Semi-autonomy in Laparoscopic Surgery: First Live Experiments

This paper presents the first live experimental results of a project aimed at developing semi-autonomy for a laparoscopic surgical robot. To achieve this goal, a special instrument-holder was designed with optical fibers and collimators. This instrument-holder projects laser dot patterns onto the organ surface which are seen in the endoscopic images. The instrument is manipulated by a commercially available laparoscopic robot (ZEUS, CMI). Its motion is controlled in the image using a visual servoing algorithm. With this system, the surgeon can eihter safely retreive the surgical instrument when it’s not in the endocsope’s field of view, or specify a desired position for the instrument in the image. The approach is successfully validated in a real surgical environment by performing experiments on living animals in the surgical training room of IRCAD.