SCAN: System for Camera Autonomous Navigation in Robotic-Assisted Surgery

Robot-Assisted systems for Minimally Invasive Surgery enhance the surgeon capability, however, direct control over both the surgical tools and the endoscope results in an increased workload that leads to longer operation times. This work investigates the introduction of SCAN (System for Camera Autonomous Navigation) to overcome this limitation. An experimental study involving 12 participants was carried out with the da Vinci Research Kit. Each user tested two novel camera control modalities, autonomous and semi-autonomous, as well as the current manual control of the camera, while carrying out a dry-lab task. Among the camera control modalities, the autonomous navigation achieved better objective performances and the highest user confidence. Moreover, the autonomous control (along with the semi-autonomous one) was able to optimize some metrics related to the robotic surgery workflow.