| Open surgery traditionally involves making a large incision to visualize the operative field and to access human internal tissues. Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is an attractive alternative to the open surgery whereby essentially the same operations are performed using the specialized instruments designed to fit into the body through several pencil-sized holes instead of one large incision. It can minimize trauma and pain, decrease the recovery time thereby reducing the hospital stay and cost, but also offers more technical difficulties to surgeons.; Despite the lack of dexterity and perception, all surgeries are moving toward MIS due to the benefits to patients. However, the demand on surgeons is much higher during suturing, which is the primary tissue approximation method. Suturing is known as one of the most difficult tasks in MIS and consumes a significant percentage of the operating time. Despite the important role and technical challenge of suturing in MIS, there is little research on suturing.; Motivated by these observations, a new surgical robotic system, which we have named EndoBot, is developed in this research. The focus of the research is the development of the EndoBot controller that is capable of a range of MIS operations including manual, shared, and supervised autonomous operations. Due to the challenge of the suturing task, the particular emphasis is placed on its automation. The suturing operation is decomposed as knot forming, knot placement, and tension control. New algorithms are developed and implemented for each subproblem and integrated for the completely autonomous knot tying. To ensure safe operation, a discrete event controller allows interruption by the surgeon at any moment and continuation with autonomous operation after the interruption. |
