Autonomous Robot-Assistant Camera Holder for Minimally Invasive Surgery

In this paper we present an autonomous camera holder robotic system for minimally invasive surgery (MIS). The proposed system is composed of a 7-DoF collaborative robot, i.e. Franka robot, holding the surgical camera and a motion capture system, i.e. Qualisys system, tracking online the surgical tools movements. The robot adapts its movements to continuously monitor the surgical gestures, based on the tools tips coordinates provided by the Qualisys system. The surgical camera is inserted into the patient’s body through a surgical device, i.e. trocar, generating a kinematic constraint commonly known as Remote Center of Motion (RCM) constraint. In order to preserve the patient safety, the RCM constraint is guaranteed by the control approach. Moreover, a compliance control law is implemented to smooth the robot movements as well as to reduce the efforts generated by the human-robot interactions. Robot Operating System (ROS) framework has been used to establish the communication between the robot and Qualisys, using the UDP protocol for data exchange.