Humanoids for Robot-Assisted Surgery: Bimanual Base Placement and Tool-Mount Optimization via Capability Maps

2026-09-27

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenges of kinematic adaptation and optimal placement when deploying humanoid robots in laparoscopic surgery. To overcome the limitations of conventional base-only optimization, this work proposes a capability map-based joint optimization framework that simultaneously determines the robot's base position and tool mounting orientation, thereby maximizing dual-arm reachability under remote center of motion (RCM) constraints. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated through comparative evaluations across multiple robotic platforms. Experimental results demonstrate that the method achieves nearly 90% reachability in confined-workspace procedures such as cholecystectomy, while also delineating its limitations in large-scale surgeries. Ultimately, this research provides a quantitative foundation for the clinical application of humanoid robots in surgical settings.

Abstract

Rapid advances in humanoid robotics have motivated growing interest in the application of humanoids for healthcare and clinical tasks. However, it remains unclear how close contemporary humanoids are to meeting the kinematic demands of robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery. In this work, we address the question of optimal robot positioning through a quantitative analysis of workspace and robot setup configurations. We present a capability-map-based robot setup framework that optimizes humanoid base placement and tool mounting orientation to maximize bimanual humanoid reachability while accounting for tool-tip kinematics and remote-center-of-motion (RCM) constraints. We evaluate three humanoid platforms spanning different body dimensions and kinematic redundancy on workspace reachability for three representative general surgery procedures: cholecystectomy, inguinal hernia repair, and sleeve gastrectomy. The proposed joint optimization of base placement and tool mounting consistently outperforms base-only optimization and heuristic baselines. For cholecystectomy and inguinal hernia repair, which are characterized by relatively small and minimally overlapping workspaces, humanoid reachability approached 90%. For the larger, overlapping multi-port arm workspace of sleeve gastrectomy, humanoids yield substantially lower coverage. These results quantify the near-term promise of humanoids for selected laparoscopic procedures and clarify key limitations that must be addressed for broader deployment.

Problem

• Humanoid robots
• Robot-assisted surgery
• Laparoscopic surgery
• Base placement optimization
• Remote center of motion

Innovation

• Humanoid Robotics
• Capability Maps
• Robot-Assisted Surgery
• Base Placement Optimization
• Remote Center of Motion