Task-Specific Robot Base Pose Optimization for Robot-Assisted Surgeries

Preoperative planning and intra-operative system setup are crucial steps to successfully integrate robotically assisted surgical systems (RASS) into the operating room. Efficiency in terms of setup planning directly affects the overall procedural costs and increases acceptance of RASS by surgeons and clinical personnel. Due to the kinematic limitations of RASS, selecting an optimal robot base location and surgery access point for the patient is essential to avoid potentially critical complications due to reachability issues. To this end, this work proposes a novel versatile method for RASS setup and planning based on robot capability maps (CMAPs). CMAPs are a common tool to perform workspace analysis in robotics, as they are in general applicable to any robot kinematics. However, CMAPs have not been completely exploited so far for RASS setup and planning. By adapting global CMAPs to surgical procedure-specific tasks and constraints, a novel RASS capability map (RASSCMAP) is generated. Furthermore, RASSCMAPs can be derived to also comply with kinematic access constraints such as access points in laparoscopy. RASSCMAPs are versatile and applicable to any kind of surgical procedure; they can be used on the one hand for aiding in intra-operative experience-based system setup by visualizing online the robot’s capability to perform a task. On the other hand, they can be used to find the optimal setup by applying a multi-objective optimization based on a genetic algorithm preoperatively, which is then transfered to the operating room during system setup. To illustrate these applications, the method is evaluated in two different use cases, namely, pedicle screw placement in vertebral fixation procedures and general laparoscopy. The proposed RASSCMAPs help in increasing the overall clinical value of RASS by reducing system setup time and guaranteeing proper robot reachability to successfully perform the intended surgerie

Optimal Robotic Setup of Workplaces in Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery

The setup of robotically assisted surgical systems (RASS) is essential for safe interventions. In order to find an optimal robotic setup, various aspects such as computation of the robot's capability and reachability within its workspace, specification of the tasks in a machine-readable manner, and computation of the potential collisions during the task execution are typically considered. To achieve this, this thesis integrates concepts of workspace analysis, task specification, and collision avoidance for the MiroSurge teleoperation system developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The system consists of redundant manipulators known as the MIRO robot designed for medical field applications. The proposed workflow allows the user to abstract the setup planning task into a numerical optimization problem which is then solved using a Genetic Algorithm. It finds an optimal base and trocar placement for the minimally invasive robotic surgery setup. The results of the experiments demonstrate that the utilized integration of the concepts yields adequate setup planning for the target application domain of minimally invasive robotic surgery

Video1_Task-specific robot base pose optimization for robot-assisted surgeries.MP4

Preoperative planning and intra-operative system setup are crucial steps to successfully integrate robotically assisted surgical systems (RASS) into the operating room. Efficiency in terms of setup planning directly affects the overall procedural costs and increases acceptance of RASS by surgeons and clinical personnel. Due to the kinematic limitations of RASS, selecting an optimal robot base location and surgery access point for the patient is essential to avoid potentially critical complications due to reachability issues. To this end, this work proposes a novel versatile method for RASS setup and planning based on robot capability maps (CMAPs). CMAPs are a common tool to perform workspace analysis in robotics, as they are in general applicable to any robot kinematics. However, CMAPs have not been completely exploited so far for RASS setup and planning. By adapting global CMAPs to surgical procedure-specific tasks and constraints, a novel RASS capability map (RASSCMAP) is generated. Furthermore, RASSCMAPs can be derived to also comply with kinematic access constraints such as access points in laparoscopy. RASSCMAPs are versatile and applicable to any kind of surgical procedure; they can be used on the one hand for aiding in intra-operative experience-based system setup by visualizing online the robot’s capability to perform a task. On the other hand, they can be used to find the optimal setup by applying a multi-objective optimization based on a genetic algorithm preoperatively, which is then transfered to the operating room during system setup. To illustrate these applications, the method is evaluated in two different use cases, namely, pedicle screw placement in vertebral fixation procedures and general laparoscopy. The proposed RASSCMAPs help in increasing the overall clinical value of RASS by reducing system setup time and guaranteeing proper robot reachability to successfully perform the intended surgeries.</p