In SARAS we planned to develop three platforms of increasing complexity:
1. MULTIROBOTS-SURGERY platform: the main surgeon will use a commercial robotic system whereas the assistant surgeon will teleoperate the SARAS assistive robotic arms. In our experimental setup, the main surgeon will use the da Vinci robot (by Intuitive Surgical Inc.) equipped with the da Vinci Research Kit (DVRK). The assistant surgeon will remotely control the SARAS arms by using haptic devices with force feedback.
2. SOLO-SURGERY platform: the SARAS system will be autonomous and will play the role of the assistant to help the main surgeon at the da Vinci console performing the surgical procedure.
3. LAPARO2.0-SURGERY platform: SARAS system will play the role of the assistant as in the SOLO-SURGERY case, but with the main surgeon using standard handheld laparoscopic tools.
Such platforms were planned to be ready at M12, M24 and M36, respectively. We have now developed and validated the MULTIROBOTS-SURGERY platform and we are now developing the SOLO-SURGERY platform. It is worth highligthing that we are still improving the first platform with features that will be needed also on the second one (e.g. strain gauges to measure the interaction forces instead of estimating them via vision).
More specifically, this is in a nutshell the work performed on the technical side and the achived results:
1. We developed the SARAS robotic arms and SARAS console,
2. We developed the phantoms for the prostatectomy and we are developing the ones for the nephrectomy,
3. A bilateral teleoperation architecture has been developed to allow the assitant surgeon to remotely control the SARAS arms. This step is crucial to collect the data necessary to train SARAS AI subsystems,
4. A basic version of the perception module has been developed: it allows to recognize the action in basic tasks (this will be enhanced to consider the whole procedure); to detect organs (this has been tested on videos of real interventions); to model the 3D environment,
5. The first version of the cognitive module is able to collect the output of the perception module, to make decision about simple procedures, to plan collision-free trajectories for the SARAS arms, and finally, to execute basic tasks.
The last two points are work-in-progress and will be integrated in the second platform (SOLO-SURGERY system) by the end of the second year.
Besides the technical work, we designed the SARAS website, activated the social channels and organized several workshops at major venues (ERF, ICRA, Hamlyn) to disseminate the outcomes of the SARAS project and to increase awareness on stakeholders about what embedded AI can do in the surgical scenario in the near future (technical improvements but also ethical and economical issues).
