Voice control interface for surgical robot assistants
Ana Davila, Jacinto Colan, Yasuhisa Hasegawa

TL;DR
This paper introduces a real-time voice control system for surgical robots using advanced speech recognition, aiming to reduce surgeon workload and improve collaboration during minimally invasive procedures.
Contribution
It presents a novel integration of Whisper speech recognition with ROS for surgical robot control, demonstrating high accuracy and real-time performance in surgical tasks.
Findings
High accuracy in voice command recognition
Real-time system performance demonstrated
Feasibility shown in tissue triangulation task
Abstract
Traditional control interfaces for robotic-assisted minimally invasive surgery impose a significant cognitive load on surgeons. To improve surgical efficiency, surgeon-robot collaboration capabilities, and reduce surgeon burden, we present a novel voice control interface for surgical robotic assistants. Our system integrates Whisper, state-of-the-art speech recognition, within the ROS framework to enable real-time interpretation and execution of voice commands for surgical manipulator control. The proposed system consists of a speech recognition module, an action mapping module, and a robot control module. Experimental results demonstrate the system's high accuracy and inference speed, and demonstrates its feasibility for surgical applications in a tissue triangulation task. Future work will focus on further improving its robustness and clinical applicability.
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Taxonomy
TopicsSoft Robotics and Applications
