Control Architecture and experimental validation of a Novel Surgical Robotic Instrument

Autonomous robot-assisted surgery demands reliable, high-precision platforms that strictly adhere to the safety and kinematic constraints of minimally invasive procedures. Existing research platforms, primarily based on the da Vinci Research Kit, suffer from cable-driven mechanical limitations that degrade state-space consistency and hinder the downstream training of reliable autonomous policies. We present an open-source, robot-agnostic Remote Center of Motion (RCM) controller based on a closed-form analytical velocity solver that enforces the trocar constraint deterministically without iterative optimization. The controller operates in Cartesian space, enabling any industrial manipulator to function as a surgical robot. We provide implementations for the UR5e and Franka Emika Panda manipulators, and integrate stereoscopic 3D perception. We integrate the robot control into a full-stack ROS-based surgical robotics platform supporting teleoperation, demonstration recording, and deployment of learned policies via a decoupled server-client architecture. We validate the system on a bowel grasping and retraction task across phantom, ex vivo, and in vivo porcine laparoscopic procedures. RCM deviations remain sub-millimeter across all conditions, and trajectory smoothness metrics (SPARC, LDLJ) are comparable to expert demonstrations from the JIGSAWS benchmark recorded on the da Vinci system. These results demonstrate that the platform provides the precision and robustness required for teleoperation, data collection and autonomous policy deployment in realistic surgical scenarios.

Long, slender instruments are essential for minimally invasive surgery (MIS), but achieving precise distal manipulation becomes increasingly difficult when actuation extends along the entire instrument. Here, we present an electrothermally actuated fiber-based robot designed for MIS procedures, in which Joule heating is concentrated in the distal active segment. The fiber is fabricated using a thermal drawing process and uses embedded metallic wires for thermal actuation. This robotic fiber, 1.9 mm in diameter and 1.2 m in length, can precisely manipulate surgical laser fibers with positional precision below 100 $μ$m. The compact size of the fiber robot allows it to pass through the working channel of a flexible endoscope, while keeping both devices mechanically uncoupled to allow independent motion. A phantom demonstration combining the robotic fiber with a da Vinci instrument conceptually demonstrated its compatibility with existing endoscopic systems for clinical applications. Our robotic fiber enables precise distal motion and holds the potential to improve clinical outcomes by enhancing precision in MIS procedures.

High-performance surgical master consoles offer intuitive articulated manipulation but are expensive and difficult to reproduce, while accessible commercial haptic devices lack built-in interfaces for surgical wrist articulation and continuous grasp. We present a laparoscopic master in which general-purpose robot manipulators provide the programmable base and surgical-specific interaction is concentrated in a separable distal adapter. Each 6-DoF arm carries a custom 2-DoF direct-drive wrist, continuous grasp sensing, and clutch-based workspace management; the complete bimanual hardware costs approximately US$5,500, below common bimanual commercial haptic references. To support sustained hand-guided use, we characterize current scaling, gravity, and break-away friction and use them for posture-dependent gravity compensation and motion-gated assistance, reducing continuous actuation and thermal loading. A common master state drives either Isaac Sim or an RCM-constrained dual-FR3 platform. Master-state publication to FR3 target update adds at most 8 ms, and tip tracking shows 0.31-0.66 mm mean delay-aligned residuals. In a porcine cholecystectomy experiment, five common operator-side metrics and hand/tip-speed distributions were compared descriptively with human in-vivo telemetry from 120 clinical Versius recordings of 99 cholecystectomy procedures; no interruption originated from the master console, and no abnormal clinical signs were recorded during the 7-day postoperative observation period. These results demonstrate a surgical master built from general-purpose robot arms with surgical-specific interaction concentrated in a separable distal interface.