Surgery Task Model for Intelligent Interaction between Surgeon and Laparoscopic Assistant Robot

Surgery Task Model for Intelligent Interaction between Surgeon and Laparoscopic Assistant Robot

  This paper proposes a surgery task model for developing an intelligent interaction between a surgeon and a laparoscopic assistant robot. The proposed model contains a structured form of surgical knowledge and is expected to allow the surgeon to collaborate with the robot more naturally than the conventional control method. The model includes the surgical procedure, input information for identifying the current surgical status, and action strategies. In order to establish the surgery task model, procedures in a human cholecystectomy are analyzed and decomposed into several stages and their relationship is represented by a state-transition diagram. Each stage is carefully observed to determine the necessary input information and the action strategy. An interaction scheme based on this surgery task model is implemented using a compact laparoscopic assistant robot KaLAR and evaluated through in vivo porcine cholecystectomies.