Laparoscopy reduces patient trauma, but eliminates the surgeon’s ability to directly view and touch the surgical environment. Although current robot-assisted laparoscopy improves the surgeon’s ability to manipulate and visualize the target organs, the instruments and cameras remain constrained by the entry incision. This limits tool tip orientation and optimal camera placement. The current work focuses on developing miniature in vivo robots to assist surgeons during laparoscopic surgery by providing an enhanced field of view from multiple angles, by using mobile robots for traversing the abdominal environment, and through the use of dexterous manipulators not constrained by the abdominal wall fulcrum effect.
This work is being done in coordination with the Robotics and Mechatronics Lab, with Associate Professor Shane Farritor, and Research Assistant Professor Steve Platt, in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.
See our work in the MIT Technology Review article on Robosurgeon.
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Figure 1: 15mm crawler robot
Figure 2: Mobile Adjustable-focus Robotic Camera (MARC)
Figure 3: Port and tool (left) and gall bladder (right),
as viewed from the MARC robot
Figure 4: Tilting Adjustable-focus Surgical Camera (TASC) robot
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