An Open Source Motion Planning Framework for Autonomous Minimally Invasive Surgical Robots

Planning and execution of autonomous tasks in minimally invasive surgical robotic are significantly more complex with respect to generic manipulators. Narrow abdominal cavities and limited entry points restrain the use of external vision systems and specialized kinematics prevent the straightforward use of standard planning algorithms. In this work, we present a novel implementation of a motion planning framework for minimally invasive surgical robots, composed of two subsystems: An arm-camera registration method only requiring the endoscopic camera and a graspable device, compatible with a 12mm trocar port, and a specialized trajectory planning algorithm, designed to generate smooth, non straight trajectories. The approach is tested on a DaVinci Research Kit obtaining an accuracy of 2.71±0.89 cm in the arm-camera registration and of 1.30±0.39 cm during trajectory execution. The code is organised into STORM Motion Library (STOR-MoLib), an open source library, publicly available for the research community.