Task-specific robot base pose optimization for robot-assisted surgeries

Preoperative planning and intra-operative system setup are crucial steps to successfully integrate robotically assisted surgical systems (RASS) into the operating room. Efficiency in terms of setup planning directly affects the overall procedural costs and increases acceptance of RASS by surgeons and clinical personnel. Due to the kinematic limitations of RASS, selecting an optimal robot base location and surgery access point for the patient is essential to avoid potentially critical complications due to reachability issues. To this end, this work proposes a novel versatile method for RASS setup and planning based on robot capability maps (CMAPs). CMAPs are a common tool to perform workspace analysis in robotics, as they are in general applicable to any robot kinematics. However, CMAPs have not been completely exploited so far for RASS setup and planning. By adapting global CMAPs to surgical procedure-specific tasks and constraints, a novel RASS capability map (RASSCMAP) is generated. Furthermore, RASSCMAPs can be derived to also comply with kinematic access constraints such as access points in laparoscopy. RASSCMAPs are versatile and applicable to any kind of surgical procedure; they can be used on the one hand for aiding in intra-operative experience-based system setup by visualizing online the robot’s capability to perform a task. On the other hand, they can be used to find the optimal setup by applying a multi-objective optimization based on a genetic algorithm preoperatively, which is then transfered to the operating room during system setup. To illustrate these applications, the method is evaluated in two different use cases, namely, pedicle screw placement in vertebral fixation procedures and general laparoscopy. The proposed RASSCMAPs help in increasing the overall clinical value of RASS by reducing system setup time and guaranteeing proper robot reachability to successfully perform the intended surgeries.