Automated open wound suturing: detection and planning algorithm

Abstract

Today one of the key disadvantages of robotic surgery is a lack of a haptic feedback, while in traditional surgery a surgeon uses human haptic senses in all tasks. Providing robots with a haptic feedback have a high potential of reducing time that is spent by a surgeon on suturing subtasks and helping to reduce a surgeon fatigue. Decreasing manual input of a surgeon enables remote surgery even under long communication links with significant latency. In this paper we present a framework of wound detection and suture planning. We plan to implement and test our algorithms using KUKA iiwa manipulator.