A Reactive Autonomous Camera System for the RAVEN II Surgical Robot
This work addresses safety and efficiency issues for surgeons using robotic surgical systems, but it is a proof of concept with incremental improvements in automation.
The paper tackles the problem of manual camera repositioning increasing surgeon workload and safety risks in robotic surgery by developing an autonomous camera system for the RAVEN II robot that uses transfer learning to localize objects and control rules to adjust the view, achieving 61.21% accuracy in object identification and appropriate movement proposals based on a survey of 13 participants.
The endoscopic camera of a surgical robot provides surgeons with a magnified 3D view of the surgical field, but repositioning it increases mental workload and operation time. Poor camera placement contributes to safety-critical events when surgical tools move out of the view of the camera. This paper presents a proof of concept of an autonomous camera system for the Raven II surgical robot that aims to reduce surgeon workload and improve safety by providing an optimal view of the workspace showing all objects of interest. This system uses transfer learning to localize and classify objects of interest within the view of a stereoscopic camera. The positions and centroid of the objects are estimated and a set of control rules determines the movement of the camera towards a more desired view. Our perception module had an accuracy of 61.21% overall for identifying objects of interest and was able to localize both graspers and multiple blocks in the environment. Comparison of the commands proposed by our system with the desired commands from a survey of 13 participants indicates that the autonomous camera system proposes appropriate movements for the tilt and pan of the camera.