ColibriDoc: An Eye-in-Hand Autonomous Trocar Docking System

TL;DR

This paper introduces ColibriDoc, an autonomous robotic system that uses vision to accurately align and insert surgical instruments into the eye, simplifying robotic setup in retinal surgery.

Contribution

It presents a novel vision-based autonomous trocar docking method inspired by hummingbirds, improving robotic precision and workflow efficiency in retinal microsurgery.

Findings

Accurately estimates trocar position and pose

Achieves repeatable autonomous docking

Reduces setup complexity for robotic retinal surgery

Abstract

Retinal surgery is a complex medical procedure that requires exceptional expertise and dexterity. For this purpose, several robotic platforms are currently being developed to enable or improve the outcome of microsurgical tasks. Since the control of such robots is often designed for navigation inside the eye in proximity to the retina, successful trocar docking and inserting the instrument into the eye represents an additional cognitive effort, and is, therefore, one of the open challenges in robotic retinal surgery. For this purpose, we present a platform for autonomous trocar docking that combines computer vision and a robotic setup. Inspired by the Cuban Colibri (hummingbird) aligning its beak to a flower using only vision, we mount a camera onto the endeffector of a robotic system. By estimating the position and pose of the trocar, the robot is able to autonomously align and navigate the instrument towards the Trocar's Entry Point (TEP) and finally perform the insertion. Our experiments show that the proposed method is able to accurately estimate the position and pose of the trocar and achieve repeatable autonomous docking. The aim of this work is to reduce the complexity of robotic setup preparation prior to the surgical task and therefore, increase the intuitiveness of the system integration into the clinical workflow.