Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Surgical Robotics
Minimally Invasive Surgery
General-purpose Robots
Accessibility
da Vinci Instruments
DASH: A da Vinci Adapter for Serial-link and Humanoid Robots as an Accessible Platform for Surgical Robotics Research
🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses the limited accessibility of specialized surgical robots in resource-constrained settings due to their high costs and stringent infrastructure requirements. To overcome this, we propose DASH, a system that adapts unmodified da Vinci surgical instruments to general-purpose serial or humanoid robots via a mechanical adapter secured by native locking mechanisms. By integrating wireless tool identification with kinematic coupling matrix loading, DASH achieves low-cost teleoperation without instrument modification. Laparoscopic experiments validate the system’s effectiveness, demonstrating compatibility across diverse robotic platforms. Ultimately, DASH substantially lowers the barriers to surgical robotics research and deployment, facilitating the integration of general-purpose robots into clinical workflows and enhancing the accessibility of medical research.
📝 Abstract
Robotic minimally invasive surgery offers well-documented clinical benefits, but the cost and infrastructure requirements of purpose-built platforms limit access in rural and lower-resourced facilities. Recent work has teleoperated general-purpose robots for laparoscopic tasks and in vivo procedures, but relied on handheld instruments coupled through passive linkages rather than native robotic actuation. Instead, we adapt da Vinci Classic and Xi instruments onto general-purpose robots that can integrate in clinical workflows. We present DASH, a da Vinci Adapter for Serial-link and Humanoid platforms, consisting of two types of adapters that require no modification to the instruments themselves. Each adapter is compatible with many robotic platform load capacities, engages the instrument's native latch, and wirelessly identifies inserted tools to load instrument-specific kinematics and coupling matrices. Teleoperated experiments demonstrate the efficacy of DASH and its benefits for enabling research access to surgical robotic platforms.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Surgical Robotics
da Vinci Adapter
Humanoid Robots
Teleoperation
Wireless Tool Identification
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