Recent trends in automating robotic surgery

Eversince computer technology entered the operating room (OR), surgery has gone through one of the greatest changes in the history of medicine, and now we are foreseeing the age of the digital OR. The range of the novel applications spans from intra-operative navigation to the development of autonomous suturing tools. More recently, after 20 years of experience with pre-programmed, image-guided and teleoperational surgical robots, a new trend is emerging: to create autonomous, or partially autonomous surgical robots. These advanced systems are intended to fit into the surgical workflow, and to help the surgeon in the least intrusive way possible. It is only the recent development of surgical-digital applications which can overcome a the barrier of the cognitive load on surgeons, to become able to completely control of the operating field. Three major trends have been identified in current products and advanced research prototypes: 1) aiming to improve camera handling 2) Sub-task automation 3) complete automation.