Cooperative robotic assistant for laparoscopic surgery: CoBRASurge

Surgical robotic systems have a great impact on the application of laparoscopic surgeries in the operating room. The advent of externally operated surgical robots has prompted the first significant shift in general laparoscopic surgeries. Miniature in vivo robots that can be completely inserted in to the abdomen are also being studied to reduce patient trauma. Whereas external surgical robots have a constrained workspace but provide good speed and force capabilities; miniature surgical robots have good local workspace characteristics, but are generally slower and not as powerful. Current efforts to address these limitations include cooperatively using multiple surgical robots to increase dexterous manipulation capabilities, fault tolerance, and overall robustness. In this paper, a cooperative surgical robot system composed of an externally actuated, compact tool-positioning surgical robot, CoBRASurge (Compact Bevel-geared Robot for Advanced Surgery), and an in vivo fixed-base, task assistant Dexterous Robot, is presented to perform laparoscopic surgical procedures. The CoBRASurge functions as a gross end-effector positioning robot and the Dexterous Robot performs internal surgical tasks with fine accuracy, effectively increasing the flexibility of the robot system. The surgical procedure successfully demonstrates the feasibility of using CoBRASurge to provide the surgeon with stable and remotely adjustable repositioning of in vivo robots for laparoscopic procedures in the peritoneal cavity.