A Comparison of Assistive Methods for Suturing in MIRS

In Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery (MIRS) a robot is interposed between the surgeon and the surgical site to increase the precision, dexterity, and to reduce surgeon's effort and cognitive load with respect to the standard laparoscopic interventions. However, the modern robotic systems for MIRS are still based on the traditional telemanipulation paradigm, e.g. the robot behaviour is fully under surgeon's control, and no autonomy or assistance is implemented. In this work, supervised and shared controllers have been developed in a vision-free, human-in-the-Ioop, control framework to help surgeon during a surgical suturing procedure. Experiments conducted on the da Vinci Research Kit robot proves the effectiveness of the method indicating also the guidelines for improving results.