ColibriDoc: an Eye-in-Hand Autonomous Trocar Docking System

Dehghani S, Sommersperger M, Yang J, Salehi M, Busam B, Huang K, Gehlbach P, Iordachita I, Navab N, Nasseri MA (2022)

Publication Type: Conference contribution

Publication year: 2022

Journal

Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

Pages Range: 7717-7723

Conference Proceedings Title: Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation

Event location: Philadelphia, PA, USA

ISBN: 9781728196817

DOI: 10.1109/ICRA46639.2022.9811364

Abstract

Retinal surgery is a complex medical procedure that requires exceptional expertise and dexterity. For this purpose, several robotic platforms are currently under development to enable or improve the outcome of microsurgical tasks. Since the control of such robots is often designed for navigation inside the eye in proximity to the retina, successful trocar docking and insertion of the instrument into the eye represents an additional cognitive effort, and is therefore one of the open challenges in robotic retinal surgery. For this purpose, we present a platform for autonomous trocar docking that combines computer vision and a robotic setup. Inspired by the Cuban Colibri (hummingbird) aligning its beak to a flower using only vision, we mount a camera onto the endeffector of a robotic system. By estimating the position and pose of the trocar, the robot is able to autonomously align and navigate the instrument towards the Trocar Entry Point (TEP) and finally perform the insertion. Our experiments show that the proposed method is able to accurately estimate the position and pose of the trocar and achieve repeatable autonomous docking. The aim of this work is to reduce the complexity of the robotic setup prior to the surgical task and therefore, increase the intuitiveness of the system integration into clinical workflow.

Involved external institutions

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) DE Germany (DE) Sun Yat-Sen University CN China (CN) Wilmer Eye Institute US United States (USA) (US) Johns Hopkins University (JHU) US United States (USA) (US) Technische Universität München (TUM) DE Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

Dehghani, S., Sommersperger, M., Yang, J., Salehi, M., Busam, B., Huang, K.,... Nasseri, M.A. (2022). ColibriDoc: an Eye-in-Hand Autonomous Trocar Docking System. In Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (pp. 7717-7723). Philadelphia, PA, USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc..

MLA:

Dehghani, Shervin, et al. "ColibriDoc: an Eye-in-Hand Autonomous Trocar Docking System." Proceedings of the 39th IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2022, Philadelphia, PA, USA Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2022. 7717-7723.

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