-- Robotic surgery represents a major breakthrough in medical interventions, which has revolutionized surgical procedures. However, the high cost and limited accessibility of robotic surgery systems pose significant challenges for training purposes. This study addresses these issues by developing a cost-effective robotic laparoscopy training system that closely replicates advanced robotic surgery setups to ensure broad access for both on-site and remote users. Key innovations include the design of a low-cost robotic end-effector that effectively mimics high-end laparoscopic instruments. Additionally, a digital twin platform was established, facilitating detailed simulation, testing, and real-time monitoring, which enhances both system development and deployment. Furthermore, teleop-eration control was optimized, leading to improved trajectory tracking while maintaining remote center of motion (RCM) constraint, with a RMSE of 5 µ m and reduced system latency to 0.01 seconds. As a result, the system provides smooth, continuous motion and incorporates essential safety features, making it a highly effective tool for laparoscopic training.

This paper addresses the challenge of teleoperating continuum instruments for minimally invasive surgery (MIS). We develop and adopt a novel task-priority-based kinematic formulation to quantitatively investigate teleoperation commands for continuum instruments under remote center of motion (RCM) constraints. Using redundancy resolution methods, we investigate the kinematic performance during teleoperation, comparing linear and angular commands within a task-priority scheme. For experimental validation, an instrument module (IM) was designed and integrated with a 7-DoF manipulator. Assessments, simulations, and experimental validations demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed framework. The experiments involved several tasks: trajectory tracking of the IM tip along multiple paths with varying priorities for linear and angular teleoperation commands, pushing a ball along predefined paths on a silicon board, following a pattern on a pegboard, and guiding the continuum tip through rings on a ring board using a standard surgical kit.

This paper presents the development and assessment of a teleoperation framework for robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (MIS). The framework leverages our novel integration of an adaptive remote center of motion (RCM) using admittance control. This framework operates within a redundancy resolution method specifically designed for the RCM constraint. We introduce a compact, low-cost, and modular custom-designed instrument module (IM) that ensures integration with the manipulator, featuring a force-torque sensor, a surgical instrument, and an actuation unit for driving the surgical instrument. The paper details the complete teleoperation framework, including the telemanipulation trajectory mapping, kinematic modelling, control strategy, and the integrated admittance controller. Finally, the system capability to perform various surgical tasks was demonstrated, including passing a thread through the rings, picking and placing objects, and trajectory tracking.

Minimally Invasive Surgeries (MIS) are challenging for surgeons due to the limited field of view and constrained range of motion imposed by narrow access ports. These challenges can be addressed by robot-assisted endoscope systems which provide precise and stabilized positioning, as well as constrained and smooth motion control of the endoscope. In this work, we propose an online hierarchical optimization framework for visual servoing control of the endoscope in MIS. The framework prioritizes maintaining a remote-center-of-motion (RCM) constraint to prevent tissue damage, while a visual tracking task is defined as a secondary task to enable autonomous tracking of visual features of interest. We validated our approach using a 6-DOF Denso VS050 manipulator and achieved optimization solving times under 0.4 ms and maximum RCM deviation of approximately 0.4 mm. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in addressing the constrained motion planning challenges of MIS, enabling precise and autonomous endoscope positioning and visual tracking.

In laparoscopic robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery, the kinematic control of the robot is subject to the remote center of motion (RCM) constraint at the port of entry (e.g., trocar) into the patient's body. During surgery, after the instrument is inserted through the trocar, intrinsic physiological movements such as the patient's heartbeat, breathing process, and/or other purposeful body repositioning may deviate the position of the port of entry. This can cause a conflict between the registered RCM and the moved port of entry. To mitigate this conflict, we seek to utilize the interaction forces at the RCM. We develop a novel framework that integrates admittance control into a redundancy resolution method for the RCM kinematic constraint. Using the force/torque sensory feedback at the base of the instrument driving mechanism (IDM), the proposed framework estimates the forces at RCM, rejects forces applied on other locations along the instrument, and uses them in the admittance controller. In this paper, we report analysis from kinematic simulations to validate the proposed framework. In addition, a hardware platform has been completed, and future work is planned for experimental validation.