Human-integrated automation of suturing task with one-master two-slave system for laparoscopic surgery

Automating surgical subtasks such as suturing, cutting, and debridement can reduce surgeon fatigue and procedure time and also facilitate tele-surgery. Especially, suturing is ubiquitous subtask in surgery. To achieve fully autonomous suturing with surgical robot is challenging due to deformation of human tissue. However, certain level of autonomy in robotic surgery could not only free the surgeon from some tedious repetitive tasks, but also utilize the advantages of robot : high dexterity and accuracy. This paper presents a human-integrated autonomous procedure of suturing task using surgical robot which is capable of force estimation. We propose a system that encloses the feature of human intervention to insert/pull needle which requires for utmost attention and the feature of autonomous control of approach/grasp needle for tedium procedure. The system consists of one-master two-slave for human-integrated autonomous surgical suturing which can control two slave forceps' manipulator through one master. The estimated force is used to recognize the needle insertion by one of the slave that manually controlled with a master. Then another slave starts autonomous approach/grasp. Finally, the approached slave pull off the needle manually with a master. We conducted single throw suturing task and evaluated the proposed system based on completion time with conventional robotic suturing task. As a result, time was successfully decreased by average 79% in grasping mode.