Technical and Functional Validation of a Teleoperated Multirobots Platform for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Nowadays Robotic assisted Minimally Invasive Surgeries (R-MIS) are the elective procedures for treating highly accurate and scarcely invasive pathologies, thanks to their ability to empower surgeons dexterity and skills. In the international research panorama of new prototypes for surgical tele-operated systems, a new master-slave robotic platform has been developed within the European funded project Smart Autonomous Robotic Assistant Surgeon (SARAS). The SARAS Multi-Robots Surgery (MRS) system is conceived to be tele-operated by an assistant surgeon during R-MIS. In this work, we will present the SARAS MRS platform validation protocol, framed in order to assess: (i) its technical performances in purely dexterity exercises, i.e. deriving from the motion-related parameters of the end effectors, to be compared with those of a reference da Vinci® system, and (ii) its functional performances, i.e. the level of accomplishment of surgical related tasks. The results obtained show a prototype able to put the users in the condition of accomplishing the tasks requested (both dexterity- and surgical-related), even with reasonably lower performances respect to the industrial standard. The main aspects on which further improvements are needed result to be the stability of the end effectors, the depth perception and the vision systems, to be enriched with dedicated virtual fixtures.