Robots in laparoscopic surgery: current and future status

Kenji Kawashima; Takahiro Kanno; Kotaro Tadano

doi:10.1186/s42490-019-0012-1

Robots in laparoscopic surgery: current and future status

BMC Biomed Eng. 2019 May 29:1:12. doi: 10.1186/s42490-019-0012-1. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Kenji Kawashima¹, Takahiro Kanno¹, Kotaro Tadano²

Affiliations

¹ Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan.
² Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on robots used for laparoscopic surgery, which is one of the most active areas for research and development of surgical robots. We introduce research and development of laparoscope-holder robots, master-slave robots and hand-held robotic forceps. Then, we discuss future directions for surgical robots. For robot hardware, snake like flexible mechanisms for single-port access surgery (SPA) and NOTES (Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery) and applications of soft robotics are actively used. On the software side, research such as automation of surgical procedures using machine learning is one of the hot topics.

Keywords: Automation; Cyber-physical system; Flexible mechanisms; Laparoscopic surgery; Surgical robot.

Publication types

Review