ALISS: Autonomy at a Less Invasive Scale in Surgery

This project aims to create a full set of modular tools for autonomous robotic surgery, as well as the perceptual capabilities and logical framework to integrate them into full procedures. The team has divided surgical procedures into seven core tasks: retraction, resection, hemostasis, proprioception, debridement, palpation, and suturing. The team then creates a logical framework that defines procedures in terms of these tasks and allows the robot to progress from one task to another. As the robot carries out a procedure, it not only assesses completeness of the subtask, but also its own uncertainty, allowing it to request human surgeon intervention when uncertainty is high. Development is centered around the Virtuoso, a surgical robot with a novel concentric tube form factor and narrow dimensions that allows it to bend and reach difficult anatomical locations that neither current endoscopes nor human surgeons can easily access. Although the tool attachment and the perceptual systems are specific to the Virtuoso, the task algorithms and logical framework will be robot agnostic. The technology developed in ALISS will endow the Virtuoso robot with autonomous surgical capabilities and advance the state of the field by developing generally applicable logical frameworks and algorithms. 

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