Development of Virtual Reality-Vision System in Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Surgery

The robot-assisted surgical systems that allow minimally invasive surgery have diverse advantages compared to conventional open surgery. However, there still remain some drawbacks to be improved such as the discontinuous surgical operation flow that occurs during switching control between the endoscope system and the patient side manipulator (PSM). It can lead to collision between surgical instruments, possibility of injury to patients, and increased operation time. Thus, a virtual reality-vision system is proposed to enable continuous surgical operation flow and intuitive control of endoscopic system. As a preliminary study, 6 types of motion capture data, pitch down, pitch up, roll left, roll right, yaw left, and yaw right, were collected from two subjects. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is high enough to avoid classification issue, so available ranges of threshold for each motion could be suggested. Based on the provided thresholds, intuitive velocity control strategy of endoscope system will be implemented. Furthermore, collision avoidance system using Oriented Bounded Box (OBB) was designed to suppress user mistakes caused by unintended head motion. The simulation results show motion trajectory of endoscope without any collision with other instruments.