Position sensing for surgical robots using time of flight sensor

Since the spread of COVID 19 worldwide, information and communication technology has been accelerating in the medical field. It is easy to switch to online medical interviews, but it is difficult to go online for biological examinations and surgical procedures. Therefore, there is an increasing demand for automatic handling of living organisms in the medical and bioengineering fields. Although surgical robots, such as the da Vinci, reduces labor, it is necessary to accurately measure the position and posture of organs and blood vessels for complete automation, and such technology has not been applied to surgical robots. There are methods for creating a three dimensional model of an organ by measuring it beforehand using magnetic resonance imaging or computed tomography, and to reflect the information during surgery by using augmented reality and other methods. However, there is currently no technology for automatically determining the position of organs and blood vessels in real time during surgery. To automate the grasping motion of a forceps type manipulator used with surgical robots, we applied a time of flight, ToF, sensor to obtain the position and orientation of a blood vessel. We developed a method for detecting blood vessels from the points measured using a ToF sensor and estimating their thicknesses and directions. We evaluated the effectiveness of our method in an experiment involving a simulated blood vessel. © 2021 Proceedings of the 21st International Conference of the European Society for Precision Engineering and Nanotechnology, EUSPEN 2021. All rights reserved.