Next-generation Teleoperated Semi-Autonomous Interventional Surgical Robots: soft robots, soft sensors, nonlinear modeling, and learning-based control

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The current generation of surgical robots, i.e., first-generation, have articulated arms that are connected to long thin rigid instruments. These instruments are inserted to the patient's body through small incisions on the skin. On of the problems with the rigid instruments is that they each require a dedicated incision on the skin and their motion is independent from each other. While for a delicate surgery, e.g., on heart, choreographic motion among the arms is required. Moreover, for a robotic surgery 3 - 4 articulated arms are required which imposes a large lump of capital investment ($3-5 M) to the healthcare system for having one surgical robot running. Currently, surgeon sits at a control console (similar to a cockpit) and manipulates joysticks while the robotic arms precisely replicate the surgeon's motions inside the patient's body. Now, the robots merely follow the commands coming from the surgeons thus should, for example, a communication disruption occurs, the robot stays idle until the next commands arrive through the communication channel. Therefore, the current technology may fall short of clinical requirement for telesurgery. This research is a step toward developing next-generation surgical robots that are soft and semi-autonomous. More specifically, this proposal has four main objectives: 1) developing soft tactile sensors that help in understanding of the shape, pose, force, and interaction of the robotic instruments inside the patient's body, 2) developing soft surgical robots for bronchoscopy and cardiac endovascular surgery that are small and 2-3 of those can be packed into a small-diameter catheter to perform surgery inside the patient's trachea or heart, 3) developing tool-tissue models that assist in understanding the state of interaction between the soft surgical robots and patient's body, and 4) to develop artificial intelligence (AI-) based control methods to add a layer of self-awareness and semi-autonomy to the soft robots to assist the surgeons in rapid and precise performance of his surgical tasks and to eliminate the risk of idling while the communication is disrupted. The outputs of this research will contribute to the advancement of surgical robotics knowledge in Canada putting Canadian researchers at the forefront of benefiting from state-of-the-art next-generation surgical robots, conception of intellectual property within the Canadian territory that can be further commercialized domestically or across the border with the US/EU partners. Moreover, the semi-autonomous surgical robots proposed here will enable the early-career surgeons to adopt tele-operated surgeries with the embedded assistance from the robot controller. This will eventually contribute to increasing the access to the state-of-the-art treatments in the rural Canada and suburban communities. It is also a step forward toward benefiting from the power of AI in medicine for which Canada shall maintain its global leadership in the world.