Modular design of a teleoperated robotic control system for laparoscopic minimally invasive surgery based on ROS and RT-Middleware

Purpose Robotic systems for laparoscopic minimally invasive surgery (MIS) always end up with highly sophisticated mechanisms and control schemes – making it a long and hard development process with a steep price. This paper aims to propose and realize a new, efficient and convenient strategy for building effective control systems for surgical and even other complex robotic systems. Design/methodology/approach A novel method that takes advantage of the modularization concept by integrating two middleware technologies (robot operating system and robotic technology middleware) into a common architecture based on the strengths of both was designed and developed. Findings Tests of the developed control system showed very low time-delay between the master and slave sides; good movement representation on the slave manipulator; and high positional and operational accuracy. Moreover, the new development strategy trial came with much higher efficiency and lower costs. Research limitations/implications This method results in a modularized and distributed control system that is amenable to collaboratively develop; convenient to modify and update; componentized and easy to extend; mutually independent among subsystems; and practicable to be running and communicating across multiple operating systems. However, experiments show that surgical training and updates of the robotic system are still required to achieve better proficiency for completing complex minimally invasive surgical operations with the proposed and developed system. Originality/value This research proposed and developed a novel modularization design method and a novel architecture for building a distributed teleoperation control system for laparoscopic MIS.